Technique and Form of the Land: The Systems and the Morphologies of Turkish Caravanserais The Design of the Landscape, the Caravan Routes, the Silk Road, the Caravanserais

Abstract

This research doesn’t want to offer defined and systematic contributions; it isn’t a cataloguing or an historico-critical analysis of the “caravanserais” phenomenon. The aim consists in the effort to explain the relationship linking the form to geography, morphology and landscape architecture. The purpose is to offer a critical reading of the typological differences own of these structures, in relation to urban and suburban settlements, with particular reference to the examples scattered throughout the Mediterranean, in Egypt, Syria and Turkey. The caravanserais, commercial architectures on the ancient trade routes, are the topic of this paper. The cognitive analysis rebuilds a global vision about their origin, their character and the way in which these buildings build the landscape and the city. These complex and recognizable structures, the network of the routes, the land subdivision, the pattern crops are the elements contributing to the recognition of the landscape identity, where the physical factor and the historical events determine the perpetuation of techniques and forms.