Investigating The Impact Of Muqarnas On The Daylighting Performance Of Historical Turkish Baths

The intangible cultural heritage features of historical buildings became an important issue after the adoption of UNESCO’s Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage. In addition to all their other traditional features, the atmosphere of the interior of Turkish baths (hammams), which includes daylight and steam, can be regarded as their intangible cultural heritage feature. Furthermore, the interrelation between daylight and the geometric features of these baths is a crucial parameter in creating this atmosphere. Therefore, this study focused on the interaction between daylight intake and the muqarnas of traditional Turkish baths. The purpose of this study is to measure the effect of muqarnas decorations on daylight intake in the interior space of historical Turkish baths through simulations. Also, a model that can optimize the muqarnas geometry according to the desired amount of annual daylight intake in the space was proposed. A section of the bath with muqarnas in its dome transition element was selected for daylighting analysis. After the simulation setups were completed, daylighting analysis simulations were conducted on the three-dimensional models of the Turkish bath, both with and without muqarnas. According to the simulation results, muqarnas were observed to have a slight effect on daylight intake. The proposed optimization model emphasizes the relationship between the amount of daylighting in the interior and the muqarnas. The optimization experiments demonstrated that daylighting performance can be enhanced with the help of muqarnas decorations.