Evaluation of Analysis Techniques for Decoding the Design Principles of Historic Environments

There is a complex relationship between many factors that shape the buildings in the historic environment, which is formed according to cultural lifestyles. Analyzing this complex relationship is important in revealing and documenting the design language of historic environments and creating a basis for new designs to be made in the environment. There are many specialized analysis methods for analyzing the design principles of the environment. The question of which attributes are to be extracted from the environment, what the scale of analysis is, and how the collected data will be processed are important in terms of which analysis technique to choose. In this study, ten analysis techniques, which are the most commonly used methods for historic environmental analysis, including visual analysis, image analysis, morphological, typological and typomorphological analysis, space syntax, shape grammar, fractal analysis, geographic information system (GIS) and data mining, are examined. Analysis techniques have been compared regarding their quality, scale, and opportunities, and their similarities and differences have been revealed. While some analysis techniques focus more on the building scale, others have shown more effective use at the urban scale. It has been observed that analysis techniques frequently used at both urban and building scales are often used together and form a bridge between them. At the end of the study, a comprehensive assessment of the existing body of knowledge in the literature has been made, providing a helpful background for researchers whose field of study is analysis in the historic environment.