The Importance of Iconic Buildings for City Image: Konya Science Center Example

Abstract

Science centers are experimental and applied places that are designed topave the way for people from all age and with different knowledge to learnthe information from the source and to trigger their interest towardsscience. Science centers convert science into an education in anentertaining manner. Moreover, science centers can be defined as placesthat exhibit history and culture of the geography that are present inaddition to their contribution to science, while being places where scienceand art are merged to each other in harmony. In recent period, scientificevents 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 cansometimes serve as an important focal point of the city by attracting morevisitors from certain museums. It is seen in recent period that sciencecenters are being designed as iconic buildings with the purpose of creatingattention with their different architecture. Science centers, which aredesigned as iconic buildings with their interest and curious architecturaldesigns, create a new attraction point by drawing tourists to the city alongwith the educational activities.The aim of this study is to reveal the opinions of the architect in the designof Konya Science Center, to analyze the relationship established by the building with the city, its scale with surrounding texture and human, theaccess to building, its form, material, technology and its spatialpresentation to determine whether it is an iconic building or not. For thispurpose, science centers’ design purpose and their importance for the cityare explained firstly, then examples across the world are given.Observations and interviews are made, photographs of the building aretaken and any kind of written and drawn resources are utilized in order todetermine whether the selected building is in accordance with thedefinition “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 indesign and construction technology fields in general terms after itsanalysis in architectural terms. It is hope that Konya Science Center that isfeaturing icon building will be attention center for Konya city afterMevlana Museum because of owing to its different form, materialselection, building and Leeds certified sustainable building.