Özet:
Science centers are experimental and applied places that are designed to
pave the way for people from all age and with different knowledge to learn
the information from the source and to trigger their interest towards
science. Science centers convert science into an education in an
entertaining manner. Moreover, science centers can be defined as places
that exhibit history and culture of the geography that are present in
addition to their contribution to science, while being places where science
and art are merged to each other in harmony. In recent period, scientific
events may create attraction for cities in addition to cultural events,
Science centers, where education is found together with entertainment,
are now becoming more and more popular in the world and they can
sometimes serve as an important focal point of the city by attracting more
visitors from certain museums. It is seen in recent period that science
centers are being designed as iconic buildings with the purpose of creating
attention with their different architecture. Science centers, which are
designed as iconic buildings with their interest and curious architectural
designs, create a new attraction point by drawing tourists to the city along
with the educational activities.
The aim of this study is to reveal the opinions of the architect in the design
of Konya Science Center, to analyze the relationship established by the building with the city, its scale with surrounding texture and human, the
access to building, its form, material, technology and its spatial
presentation to determine whether it is an iconic building or not. For this
purpose, science centers’ design purpose and their importance for the city
are explained firstly, then examples across the world are given.
Observations and interviews are made, photographs of the building are
taken and any kind of written and drawn resources are utilized in order to
determine whether the selected building is in accordance with the
definition “iconic building”.
As a result, it is determined with this study that Konya Science Center is
“an icon building” for the city in parallel with the developing trends in
design and construction technology fields in general terms after its
analysis in architectural terms. It is hope that Konya Science Center that is
featuring icon building will be attention center for Konya city after
Mevlana Museum because of owing to its different form, material
selection, building and Leeds certified sustainable building.