Deciphering the Informal: Border Trade Leftovers and the Tandoori House

Abstract

Rural settlements on the south-eastern part of Turkey, along the D-400 transnational trade route to Syria and Iraq, are widely characterized by user-built, makeshift additions to the main buildings. With the reuse of left-over materials from border trade trucks, such as fuel tanks,tires, pallets, truck trailer tarps integrated with regular building materials like mud, stone and briquette in certain ways, auxiliary spaces of everyday life such as tandoori houses, poultry houses, garages, storage units, sheep pens, garden fences and walls, some in quiet sophisticated forms, are built by the locals themselves. In this context, this research aims to analyze the architectural knowledge embodied in these additions, just as another form of informal genius involving, in this part of the world, border trade leftovers. An analysis of this kind involves transnational trade politics and economics, circular economy, local socio-economic structure in macro scale, and integration and reuse of materials, formation processes, methods of construction and articulation within the existing environment in micro-scale. In order to create a basis for the analysis an inventory of these additions is formed, documenting each on an interactive map with 3D models, plan-section-elevation drawings, construction and material composition diagrams. Such a work is believed to be important to shed light on the informal and to add on to a limited number of research that expands our knowledge on this fluid, unstable and under-explored form of architectural knowledge.