The reflections of the concept of beauty in the religious architecture: The example of the Ottoman period between the 13th and 17th centuries

Based on the assumption that religious concepts affect the architecture and therefore, that the concepts have their own inherent languages, this study seeks to find the reflections of the concept of beauty in the religious architecture. In other words, the study attempts to answer the extent of the effect of the concept of beauty on the architectural formation of religious buildings. The concept of beauty and its sub-concepts in the religion have a different language for every designer. This language is presented by the architect semantically and syntactically and the user interprets this construct rather in its semantic aspect. The aim here is to reach from the abstract values to some concrete forms and results. Through semantic and syntactic aspect analyses, this study revealed the effects of the concept of beauty on the formation of religious architecture. The area of research was limited to the concept of beauty in religion and the Ottoman civilization. Examples of religious architecture such as mosques, madrasahs and tombs of a certain Ottoman period were investigated. With this limitation in the building types, 40 buildings about which we have the most data (in terms of plan, vertical plan, appearance, photographs) among the samples of religious architecture were chosen as the sample. In order to figure out the effects of the concept of beauty on the architectural formation, the study employed the basic design principles for their syntactic aspect, and the concept of beauty and its sub-concepts for their semantic aspect. With the analyses of the samples, the indicators of beauty in the building types were presented. Eventually, the contributions of the concept of beauty to the architecture and its effects on the user were interpreted and recommendations regarding the issue under scrutiny were made.   Key words: The concept of beauty, space, construction, decoration, structure, syntactic aspect, basic design principles, semantic aspect, emotional reaction aspect, religion.