A Lost Cultural Heritage: Saim Sakaoglu House/Konya

In traditional folk architecture, residentials are cultural assets that are important with their folkloric and indigenous values. Traces of history based on the city and the region together with cultural assets make it possible for that city to form its own unique texture. Konya, one of the oldest settlements in Anatolia, also has its own civil architecture. The civil architecture of Konya in the pre-republican era consists of courtyaid houses, starting from Alaeddin Hill, the oldest mound, and opening into the plain and into the streets intertwining on the east-west axis, partly intersecting with each other, and also forming cul-de-sacs. The earth-sheltered, mud-brick houses behind the yard doors opening onto the streets of Konya were constructed in such a way as to rise above the stone foundation walls. However Konya was transformed into a new reconstructuring process, the examples of civil architecture which did/could not find its place in this reconstruction were destroyed one by one and it transformed the civil arcitecture which is tried to be partially conserved by registration. The zoning activities that have been carried out since the beginning of the Republican era have also affected Konya's historical texture adversely as in many cities. Before its civil architecture was transformed, Konya was influential in shaping the environment where neighborhood, street and neighbor relations existed mostly by sustenance. Because, it is seen that Konya houses interact with each other through a high level neighborhood in the texture it forms with its surroundings. As a matter of fact, the transformation of old historical sites causes the civilian architecture to disappear and the urban memory be lost. Because, it suggests new forms of reconstruction which are independent of the texture of the past, by distorting, changing, or transforming, and replacing the historical texture of the region. It cannot appeal to the people of the region. An attempt was made to introduce the Saim Sakaoglu house - one of the qualified houses in the caybasi Neighborhood and one of the examples of civil architecture that is one of the leading examples of the lost heritage - to understand the civil architecture of Konya today and to keep the lost city memory alive in the minds of new generations.