Abstract
Rural architecture has grown over time, exhibiting continuities as well as adaptations to the different social and economic conditions of each period. Continuity in rural architecture is related to time, tradition and materiality, involving structural, typological, functional and social issues that are subject to multiple interpretations. This fieldwork was conducted in an area encompassing the villages of the districts of today’s Eskişehir Seyitgazi and Afyon İhsaniye districts, the part of the landscape known as the Highlands of Phrygia. The purpose of the fieldwork was to explore the traces of the tradition of “megaron type” buildings in the villages of this part of the Phrygian Valley with an eye to pointing out the “architectural continuity” that can be identified in the rural architecture of the region. The methodology employed was to document the structures found in the villages using architectural measuring techniques and photography. The buildings were examined in terms of plan type, spatial organization, construction technique, materials and records evidencing the age of the structure. The study will attempt to produce evidence of our postulation of architectural continuity in the historical megara of the region in an effort to shed some light on the region’s rural architecture. The study results revealed megaroid structures that bear similarity to the plan archetypes, construction systems and building materials of historical megarons in the region of the Phrygian Highlands. These structures were classified in a typology that evidenced the existence of an architectural continuity of megaroid building tradition, which this study seeks to present.
