A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE USE OF CLASSICALPROPORTIONS IN OTTOMAN ARCHITECTURE: COLUMN ORDERANALYSIS IN GOVERNMENT PALACES FROM THE PERIOD OF SULTAN ABDÜLHAMID II
Keywords:
Classical architecture, Ottoman architecture, government palace, proportional analysis, column orders.Abstract
The objective of this manuscript is to prove how Ottoman architecture applied a classicist
interpretation by using classical proportions and syntax. Government palaces, which are the
best representations of Ottoman ‘Empire’ architecture in the provinces, were chosen as the
objects of study. The method applied in this study was research on the shapes of column orders
of the government palaces in Anatolia, which today’s architecture has inherited. Then,
numerical analyses of the rules and proportions of the columns determined by theoreticians of
classical architecture were performed, with proper measurements and calculations made. Fromthe study of the samples, it was concluded that “Ottomanized” versions of column orders,
towards the end of the 19th-century, have some similarities with Western classical column
orders and proportions.
