YAHŞİBEY EVLERİ
Dikili/İzmir︎ 1998—2007 ︎Construction Area: 1100 m2 ︎Site: 2800 m2 ︎Housing ︎İbrahim Eyüp, Mert Eyiler, Nevzat Sayın



1 Emre Senan House 2 Ekin Senan House 3 Nevzat Sayın house 4 Alev-Bihrat Mavitan House 5 Kerime Arsan House 6 Kemal Aydınlı House 7 Emre Senan Design Foundation / Yahşibey Design Workshops

It all started when Emre Senan said, ‘I bought a place in Yahşibey, could you take a look at this place?’ Yahşibey is a small village with 116 households and 260 inhabitants in Dikili and dates back to 1940. There is nothing extraordinary, about it; everything is ordinary. It is an introverted, quiet place, living on its own scale. The houses of the village are almost a stone wall for the street. These walls reveal little about the interior. There is an unforced, effortless seclusion. The topography also facilitates this positioning. The prevailing wind blows from the direction in which the site rises. Existing houses have no windows in this direction. The view is in the opposite direction. All these factors contribute to the buildings being embedded in the site and becoming nearly invisible.
Moreover, the stone from the excavation on the land can be our construction material. We can finish the walls with what is excavated or collected from the land. In this way, we do not throw anything outside and we do not take anything from outside. It is a closed-loop construction method. Labor can be sourced without leaving Dikili, we can transform the existing conditions by improving them without bringing anything, and a ‘new’ ‘thing’ can be created out of habits and the known. We were discussing these issues with Emre. s. The scale and style of our intervention in such a self-contained place were crucial. So who was going to do all this? The suggestion came from Emre again. We met Yılmaz Usta and have been working with him ever since. Initially, we adjusted our project drawing standards for Yılmaz Usta. Now we draw as we know, but at the start, we drew for him and explained many drawings to him in person.
Some people from the village described our work as "I don't know what is the same and what is different, but it is both like our houses and a little different" confirming our initial thought. W We are not like them, but we are not different either. This approach is specific to this unique situation and might not hold any reality elsewhere. The only constant reality is the determinism of the environment. Many things that seem like our decisions originated from the "whispers of the place." From the outside, the structures look very similar, but their interiors vary according to the user. Their common trait is that the interiors are as “outdoor”. A friend who saw the houses said they were "like the street." For the one who described them as "not feeling like a home," it was a sharp critique, but it was precisely what we wanted to hear. One of the shared aspects of the houses is that they are houses without being "home." As people and lifestyles change, so do the houses. Despite the changes, we see that they still closely resemble their former selves. They quietly stand at the intersection of familiarity and strangeness.
''İkinci'' Evden ''Birinci'' Eve: Yahşibey Evleri ve Diğer Altı Ev | Nevzat Sayın from NSMH on Vimeo