VIRTUAL London.

Abstract

On Feb 6th, 2023, Kahramanmaraş Centered Earthquakes caused unfortunate losses in almost eleven provinces of Turkey. And now, from construction engineering to architecture, each discipline is willing to take responsibility for these losses. Regarding that, this paper issues one of the architectural fallacies that is affiliated with these unfortunate events: the common practice of overhang structures on reinforced concrete buildings. Either for aesthetic concerns or practical purposes, extending the cantilever beams on the upper floors of a building is profoundly seen in the construction of apartment buildings in Turkey. Despite these heavy overhang structures are known for their negative impact on the seismic performance of buildings due to their asymmetry and irregularity, they have been consistently preferred among native contractors for their economical and practical convenience. Additionally, after these applications were recognized by building bylaws in the 1990s, they have become a phenomenon in the architectural design of residential buildings in smaller provinces of Turkey. However, along with the other major earthquakes in Turkey, the Kahramanmaraş Centered Earthquakes (2023) have proved once more that this “contractor invented architectural style” costs much more than expected. Hence, this study issues the convergence of this structural application into an architectural style and discusses its cost for the city in the context of the Kahramanmaraş Centered Earthquakes.