A Geographical Perspective of the Effects of Earthquakes on City and Dwelling Architecture: The Case of Erzincan Earthquake in 1939

Earthquakes have quite a few influences on architecture as well as many areas of life. The city of Erzincan, founded in the plains of Erzincan on the active seismic belt, had to change its location several times because of the great earthquakes in history and was reconstructed. Especially the 1939 earthquake in the history of the Republic, has also a guiding effect in the reconstruction of the modern city of Erzincan and the formation of new urban architecture. After the earthquake in 1939, the relocation of the city of Erzincan to the new settlement area (about 1.5-2 km to the north) was started. While the negative atmosphere of World War II and its political and economic reflections to our country causing the delay of this process; it conduced to the emergence of a more organized and modern city structure within the framework of a certain zoning plan. Hence, it was given particular importance to earthquake sensitivity in the architecture of the city and the earthquake resistance of the dwellings was adopted as an important criterion. However, the pavilion houses built at once to meet the need for housing after the earthquake fell short of the mark in this regard. However, prefabricated erected houses, have added a new understanding to the city architecture with their features such as single-floor and being in the garden as well as being suitable for earthquakes in terms of building materials and techniques used. In this study, archival documents, information obtained from public institutions and earlier studies were used as the basic data source. In addition, the information obtained from interviews with people who have lived in Erzincan for many years has been included in various parts of the study. Field studies were carried out for the part of the study about the dwellings. In this context, some of the pavilion house and erected house samples survived until today in the city have been examined and photographed. All the data and information obtained were analyzed and synthesized within the scope of the principles of geographical thinking and the study at hand was created.