Alışveriş merkezlerindeki etkinlik arayüzlerinin mekansal potansiyellerinin semantik ve sentaktik olarak incelenmesi
Semantic and syntactic spatial potential analysis of the event interfaces in the shopping malls
Yazar: SILA SAYGILI
Danışman: DOÇ. DR. MEHMET EMİN ŞALGAMCIOĞLU
İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi / Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Mimarlık Ana Bilim Dalı / Mimari Tasarım Bilim Dalı
Derece: Yüksek Lisans, 2019
Konu: Mimarlık = Architecture

Özet:
Kamusal alanlar, tarihten bugüne insanların hayatında önemli bir yere sahiptir. Zaman 
ile değişen kamusal alanlar, kamusal mekanlara dönüşmüş daha fiziken daha tanımlı 
yerler  haline  gelmişlerdir.  Günümüzde,  özellikle  büyük  kentlerde  insanların  sahip 
oldukları kamusal mekanlar giderek azalmaktadır  ve bu mekanların sahip oldukları 
kamusallaştırma  potansiyelleri  değerini  kaybetmeye  başlamıştır.  Alışveriş 
merkezlerinin satın alma eylemi haricinde çok işlevli bir merkez halini almasıyla , bir 
çok insan kamusal mekanda bulunma ihtiyacını,  alışveriş merkezlerinde  gidermeye 
başlamıştır.  Böylece  alışveriş  merkezleri  özel  mülkiyete  ait  kamusal  mekan  örneği 
olmuştur ve insanların boş vakitlerini geçirmek için de kullandıkları bir mekan haline 
gelmiştir.  Alışveriş merkezleri, içeride geçirilen sürenin arttırılması, ziyaretçi sayısının 
arttırılması ve de ziyaretçilerin mekan ile deneyimini kuvvetlendirilmesi  için çeşitli 
etkinlikler  düzenlemektedir.  Bu  araştırmada,  alışveriş  merkezlerinde  belirlenen 
arayüzler  ve  bu  arayüzlerin  mekansallaşarak  etkinlikler  için  kullanılması 
incelenmiştir.  Öncelikli  olarak  alışveriş  merkezi  kavramının  nereden  geldiği  ve 
kamusal mekan olma durumu tarihsel süreç içerisinde ele alınmıştır. Türkiye'de açılan 
ilk alışveriş merkezi ile günümüzdeki alışveriş merkezleri arasındaki farklılıklar, hem 
mekansal  hem  de  kullanım  açısından  olarak  süreç  ile  birlikte  ortaya  konulmuştur.
İnsan-çevre  ilişkisi  kapsamında,  ziyaretçilerin  mekanı  algılaması,  yönünü  bulması, 
kişisel  alanı  ve  hem  insanlarla  hem  de  mekan  ile  girdiği  etkileşim  konuları 
incelenmiştir.  Ziyaretçilerin  alışveriş  merkezi  içerisindeki  davranışları,  bu 
davranışların mekanın fiziksel özellikleri ile ilişkisinin detaylı olarak incelenebilmesi 
için  "Mekansal  Dizim  Yöntemi"  kullanılarak  sentaktik  verilere  ulaşılmıştır.  Vaka 
analizleri  için,  hizmet  ettiği  segment  ve  sahip  olduğu  programlar  göz  önünde 
bulundurularak,  İstanbul  içerisinde  bulunan  Kanyon  ve  İstinye  Park  alışveriş 
merkezleri  seçilmiştir.  Bu  iki  alışveriş  merkezinin  planları  ve  etkinlik  arayüzleri 
üzerinden  "2D  Syntax"  programı  kullanılarak  analizler  elde  edilmiş  ve  sonuçları 
karşılaştırılmıştır.  Etkinlik  arayüzlerinin  pasif  kullanıldığı  ve  aktif  kullanıldığı  eş 
zamanlı  etkinlik  takipleri  ile  arayüzlerin  mekansallaşmaları  gözlemlenmiştir. 
Sentaktik  verilerin  anlamlı  olup  olmadığının  sorgulanması  ve  mekanın 
programlanmasının insanlar üzerindeki etkilerinin incelenmesi için ise belirlenen geçiş 
noktalarından  kişi  sayımları  yapılmıştır.  Frekanslara  bağlı  olarak  SPSS  programı 
kullanılarak regresyon analizi yapılmış ve elde edilen verilerin birbirleri ile ilgili olan 
ilişkileri  incelenmiştir. Son olarak da mevcut durumda bulunan ana ve yan etkinlik 
arayüzlerine alternatif potansiyel  arayüz mekanları belirtilmiş ve gelecekte alışveriş 
merkezlerinin birer deneyim merkezi haline gelmesi hakkında sonuçlara ulaşılmıştır.

Abstract:
Public spaces have an important role in the public life.  In the public space, people 
gather, satisfy their socializing needs and interact with each other. However regarding 
to changing and developing society, public spaces change in time. They become more 
defined such as public places. The basic need of the person is become social with 
others  and  shopping  activities  accelerate  the  social  behaviors.  With  economic  and 
technological developments, shopping move from streets to shopping centers. They do 
not  only  provide  shopping,  but  also  many  social  activities  for  visitors  and  now 
shopping centers assume the leading role in other public places. Even the shopping 
malls are privately owned, they function as a public place and people prefer to spend 
their leisure time in these malls. From Ancient Greek Agora's to todays' shopping 
malls, needs of the public are almost same, but the way  that  they meet has changed. 
First shopping experience was just exchanging goods and the public spaces located in 
the  city  centers.  Modernization  started  with  the  industrialization  and  public  spaces 
became  an  encountering  area  rather  than  meeting.  People  started  to  live  more 
individual  and  after  1960's,  public  spaces  used  just  as  transfer  points  and  the 
interaction in between public has decreased. The most defined and under controlled 
places become more and more popular as public places and under favor of capitalism 
consumption culture increases  and shopping centers substitute the interaction center in 
between city and public. 
Shopping  malls  arrange  many  activities  for  visitors  to  create  a  pleased  shopping 
experience. These activities also support the augmented interaction between visitor 
and visitor or visitor and physical environment.  In addition, these activities affect the 
time spending in the mall that enhances the shopping possibility of the visitor. For all 
activities, shopping malls have the event interfaces. In this  research,  the main aim is 
to observe interfaces in the shopping malls and determine how these interfaces become 
a place with the events. People have started to see shopping as a free time experience 
and  this  leads  some  important  changes  in  the  shopping  malls  programs.  They  add
events such as concerts, exhibitions, playgrounds, workshops and mostly these events 
are occurred on the event interfaces with different layouts. Event interfaces are the 
highest interaction zones in the shopping malls. They strengthen the publicness of the 
place.
The scope of human-environment relations, space perception, way finding, personal 
space and interaction topics are used as inputs for semantic analysis. The behaviors of 
the visitors in the shopping mall  and the relation with the physical environment is 
examined  with  the  space  syntax  theory  and  attained  syntactic  data.  Perception  and 
experience work together to understand the surroundings. Visual perception is the first 
and most important step to interpret the data with your experiences and with the highest 
visual access way finding gets easier. There are also many icons, signboards for to use 
but if someone can not find the way easily, it leads to stress on that person and creates 
bad experience with the place. If that person has experienced the place previously, then 
way finding gets better. Personal space term is used to explain a bubble around every 
person which is important to feel comfortable. If the shopping mall is crowded than maximum  capacity,  this  leads  to  lose  personal  space  and  this  creates  stress  on  the 
person. In addition to these stress factors, the bad climate conditions and complicated 
circulation design cause to stress too. 
In Turkey, shopping malls became popular in 1998 to 2001. After 2002, many foreign 
companies joined the market. The first shopping mall in Turkey is Galleria  AVM, 
which  has  opened  in  1988.  Then  Atakule  in  1989  and  Karum  1991  followed  up. 
However, with the 4000 shops and specialized parts by variety of products, Grand 
Bazaar is the first shopping mall as an example of covered market. The construction 
for the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul started at 1461 by Suleyman  the  Magnificent and it 
is still used intensely by locals and tourists. Relating to 2018 data, in Turkey there are 
active 411 and 118 of them are located in  Istanbul. From the first shopping mall in 
Turkey to new ones, spatial organizations and usage by visitors has changed. There 
are four different type of plan typology based on circulation design. These categories 
are dumbbell, branch, cartesian and mixed. Dumbbell is the common type in Turkey. 
Furthermore,  in  the  shopping  malls  there  are  permanent  and  temporary  programs. 
Shops, dining area, cinema and fun parks are examples for the permanent programs. 
Temporary programs set for a period or daily such as concerts, advertisement events, 
playgrounds, workshops, exhibitions. These temporary programs support to permanent 
programs.  Temporary  programs  happen  on  event  interfaces  where  help  to  increase 
interaction level in the shopping mall are. Interfaces are divided into two: temporary 
and permanent interfaces. Sitting units and playgrounds are examples of temporary 
event interfaces and all other events occur  on temporary  event interfaces. Shopping 
behavior has  changed during the time and now online shopping is the  most popular 
one. Therefore, with the events, shopping malls want to become attraction center to 
survive in this new order. 
In  the  case  study,  Kanyon  and  Istinye  Park  shopping  malls  are  selected  for  the 
comparison of event interfaces. Both shopping malls  have same segment user profiles, 
linear plan schemas and both of their main event interfaces are located in the center of 
the  plan  organization  with  high  visual  access  from  every  floor.  Although  these 
similarities, their space usages are different. Kanyon  is the first open-air shopping mall 
in Istanbul but Istinye Park is an enclosed space. Kanyon has a circular circulation and 
two of the main entrances are located on the event interfaces floor. In İstinye Park, 
circulation is linear and there is no main entrance to the event interfaces floor. The 
only access to that floor is with vertical circulation. Kanyon built in 2006 and has 117 
stores. Metro, private cars, public transportation such as bus and by foot are common 
transportation types to arrive. There is an event calendar for this shopping mall and 
almost every weekend both main and side event interfaces are full with events. On the 
other  hand,  Istinye  Park  does  not  have  a  metro  connection  and  the  location  of  the 
shopping mall is not preferable for by foot. The only potential for this is the university 
campus in front of the mall. Istinye Park built in 2007 and has 280 stores. As same as 
Kanyon, this shopping mall has a crowded event calendar too. In consequence of these 
informations, floor plans, event interfaces and user behaviors compared in this thesis 
with making use of observations and space syntax methods.
Space syntax helps to acquire syntactic data from the case. Syntax 2D is one of the 
major  syntactic  analyze  program  which  helps  to  get  integration,  mean  depth, 
connectivity and circularity values for this research. For the Syntax 2D program, floor 
plans divided into two layers, first one is the boundary, which specifies the border and 
the  wall  to  indicate  obstacles.  In  the  visibility  analyses  wall  layer  includes  the obstacles, which blocks the visual access, and in accessibility analyses, they blocks the 
passing. To start with, the definitions of the syntactic values, circularity means the 
aspect ratio of the space. Connectivity helps to calculate axis to pass sequential spaces. 
Mean  depth  is  using  for  estimating  minimum  syntactic  transfer  from  one  space  to 
another. Lastly, integration value examines the relation  between other places. On the 
contrary, of connectivity, integration is a global value. If the integration value is high, 
then this is expected that the number of the people in the place is higher than the others. 
To analyze and measure the syntactic values, floor plans need to divide  in convex 
spaces.  In  this  thesis,  every  event  interface  floor  plans  divided  determined  convex 
spaces and thresholds. 
This thesis focuses on Kanyon and Istinye Park shopping malls main and side event 
interfaces with simultaneous special event days. Firstly, the interfaces were considered 
without any event to examine the first design idea. After that four special event dates 
had chosen for comparison of space usage and the effects of interface. Two different 
methodology  used  in  this  research,  one  of  them  is  counting  the  number  of  people 
passing through the determined convex spaces and thresholds. The second is syntax 
analyses with the floor plans of changing events on the interfaces. Deductions from 
both interpreted at the end. 
After  all  the  analyses,  without  any  event  on  the  interfaces,  the  counted  number  of 
people  both  weekdays  and  weekends  Kanyon  has  more  visitors  than  İstinye  Park. 
However,  even  the  number  of  visitors  doubled  the  Istinye  Park  results,  kids  are 
crowded than in Kanyon. In all the event times, Kanyon is more crowded than Istinye 
Park but only in April 23
rd
the percentage of kids is more by  reason of  event was 
accessible for everyone without any age or time restriction.  Frequency and syntactic 
values of convex spaces and thresholds help to interpret spatial analyses. SPSS is the 
supporter program in this thesis to comprehend analyses and the correlation between 
different  types  of  data.  Regression  analyses  not  only  show  how  the  correlation 
powerful or weak, but also the values are significant or not. After all studies, for both 
shopping  malls  the  highest  correlation  and  significant  values  belong  to  new  year 
concert events on the main interfaces.  There are also side event interfaces, which are 
located on same floor plans with lower integration values, and they have less event 
frequency than main interfaces.  Finally, the results show that existing main and side 
event interfaces values and analysis lead to propose new potential interfaces in the 
shopping malls. With the  developing technology and public needs, shopping malls  will 
become to consumer experience centers and occured by many experience interfaces in 
the future.