Modeling mobility-based intangible heritage: Revealing, systematizing, and generating through yörük spatial practices

Abstract

Conventional approaches to cultural heritage studies have predominantly addressed space through permanent structures, fixed settlements, and tangible physical traces, while mobility-based ways of living have often been treated as secondary or difficult-to-represent domains. However, nomadic and semi-nomadic cultures produce distinctive knowledge systems in which space is not conceived as a static object but as a process continuously constructed through time, movement, and relational practices. This doctoral dissertation examines Yörük culture within the framework of mobility-based intangible cultural heritage and investigates how its spatial practices can be revealed, systematized, and re-generated within contemporary design contexts. The study approaches culture not merely as a body of heritage to be preserved, but as a productive knowledge system operating in interaction with design and computational thinking. In this respect, mobility is positioned as a central conceptual axis connecting culture, design, and computational thinking. The primary aim of the dissertation is to make explicit the tacit knowledge embedded in Yörük spatial practices, to systematize this knowledge within a relational and rule-based structure, and ultimately to transform it into a re-generative design knowledge through computational design approaches. The dissertation is structured into five interrelated chapters, forming a comprehensive research process organized around the stages of revealing, systematizing, and generating knowledge. The first chapter establishes the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological framework of the study. It discusses the relationships between culture and computational thinking, culture and design, and design and computational thinking, and defines mobility as both a conceptual and methodological connector across these domains. This chapter also presents the problem statement, research objectives, and hypotheses, and outlines the overall structure of the thesis, explaining how mobility-based spatial knowledge is addressed and transformed throughout the study. The second chapter examines Yörük culture through a phenomenological approach, focusing on the spatial and temporal organization of nomadic life. Drawing on the literatures of nomadism, utopian thinking, and phenomenology, this chapter argues that Yörük spatial practices offer an alternative spatial worldview to sedentary architectural paradigms. Space is understood not in terms of permanence or fixed form, but through cyclicality, temporality, and lived experience. Practices related to dwelling, settlement, everyday life, and movement are analyzed to demonstrate that Yörük spatial knowledge cannot be reduced to physical structures alone, but is constituted through dynamic, experiential, and relational processes. In this context, Yörük spatial practices are positioned not merely as historical or ethnographic data, but as a productive knowledge domain for design thinking. xxii The third chapter focuses on the systematization of the spatial knowledge derived from Yörük practices, building upon the conceptual and phenomenological framework established in the previous chapter. Field studies, visual documentation, written sources, and cultural narratives are re-processed to analyze spatial organization, structural relationships, patterns of use, and movement. The objective of this chapter is to transform intuitively transmitted and tacit spatial knowledge into an explicit and transferable structure. Through identifying key spatial components and the relationships among them, a systematic framework is developed that enables cultural knowledge to be modeled as a rule-based and relational system. This chapter constitutes a critical methodological threshold by moving beyond descriptive representation toward the formalization of cultural knowledge as a design-relevant system. The fourth chapter investigates how the systematized spatial knowledge can be transformed into a productive mechanism within computational design processes. Rule-based approaches, generative design logic, and computational models are employed to generate alternative spatial configurations derived from Yörük spatial practices. Rather than treating cultural heritage as an object of representation or preservation alone, this chapter explores its reinterpretation and multiplication through design. The computationally generated spatial outputs demonstrate how mobility-based intangible cultural heritage can be translated into contemporary design environments and adapted to different contexts. In this way, cultural knowledge is repositioned as an active design input rather than a passive reference. The fifth and final chapter provides a comprehensive evaluation of the findings and discusses the theoretical, methodological, and design-oriented contributions of the dissertation. It addresses the potentials and limitations of approaching mobility-based cultural knowledge as a generative design resource and outlines directions for future research. The dissertation concludes by emphasizing that cultural heritage should not be understood as a static narrative of the past, but as a dynamic knowledge domain shaped through movement, transformation, and re-generation. In conclusion, this doctoral dissertation presents a comprehensive approach to mobility-based intangible cultural heritage by revealing, systematizing, and re-generating Yörük spatial practices through computational design. By re-conceptualizing the relationships between culture, design, and computational thinking, the study establishes a strong theoretical and methodological foundation for considering cultural knowledge as a productive input in architectural and design research.