Investigation of Architect and Non-Architect Participants’ Perceptual Evaluations on Different Period Mosque Facades

Abstract

In architecture, perception based studies about building facades have become more popular. In recent studies, mostly residential buildings and business center type of buildings had been selected as target buildings. The lack of study of the perception of the facades of religious structures has created the basic motivation for this work. In the current study, the facade features of (Seljuk period, Ottoman period and Republic period) some important mosques from different periods were evaluated according to the adjective pairs of complexity, preference and impressiveness variables. Also, whether or not the general views of the mosques represent Islamic religion and their level of arousing curiosity were questioned. For this purpose, in the study, a total of 16 mosques were used. The results obtained from the participants as architect and non-architect are given. It is seen that the participant architects show a statistically more negative approach compared to those who are non-architects in the perceptual evaluations of the facades of the mosques for complexity variable. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant difference between the participants' evaluations of preference and impressiveness variables (at p <0.05 level).