Developments in Architecture and Extension of Human Life

Human life is getting longer. 400 years ago, the average life expectancy of a person was about 30 years, but today it has increased to an average of 80 years. The most important factor in this situation is to make the buildings and interiors more healthy and hygienic conditions.

Especially in the Middle Ages, the problem of toilets had reached serious proportions with the crowding of cities in Europe. There was no internal installation for the toilets and bathrooms and there was no sewer system. People were defecating in a cup in the houses and then throwing it out the window. The streets were in feces. In the evening, the officers were cleaning these feces off the streets. Some fortresses and monasteries had toilet cubicles built out of the main building and opened directly to the garden. From the wooden seat with a hole in the middle, it was stooled directly down to the garden. In 1800’s same problem started in İstanbul as it became crowded. The they stated establising municipality organisations to get rid of these problems. Of course, it was inevitable to catch many diseases, especially the plague. In ancient cities, the streets were full of garbage. There were public toilets where a few people sat side by side and flushed their toilets, but the dirt flowed from the open. In addition, sewage was found in civilizations that lived in Anatolia BC. In the ruins of the Urartians, the palace toilet was moved out of the walls by sewage.

Indoors, heating and reaching hot water were also important for staying healthy. In ancient times, people in the northern countries were dying in winter, and people in countries close to the equator were dying of complications caused by heat. In the early periods, people warmed their shelters with the open fire, then opened chimneys and built stoves. They produced glass windows to cut the cold from the outside but not to block the interior light. They split the large houses into rooms for easier heating. They started using stoves. Especially in the northern countries, they built systems to heat more than one interior with metal extensions from the common chimney to the side room.

To clean up, to have a bath clean even hot water was needed. In the ancient Roman cities, there were shared baths with heated interiors from the bottom, but these baths were cleaned by entering the heated pool in the middle, not with running water like in Turkish baths. These baths became expensive when the slavery in the Middle Ages disappeared and the operation of these baths was dependent on manpower. They also forbade them to wash in time, suggesting a number of other religious and moral reasons, and abolished these baths. However, soap production was widespread in the 13th century. In the Ottoman cities, the need for baths was provided with Turkish hamams.

While this was the case, all of these problems have been solved by technological and design developments in architecture and urban planning. Every city now has a proper sewer system. The clean water easily reaches the houses. The toilets and the bathrooms are available in every house. Since it is easier to obtain hot water, people do their cleaning more frequently so that the diseases do not spread. Heating is provided by the heating system in all houses of the developed countries and in the houses of the well-income individuals in developing countries. Although there are still families warming with the stove, it is easier to reach the material to burn in it. In heated interiors people stay healthy.

As a result, the developments in architecture enabled people to live in clean, viable cities, buildings and interiors. Thus, human life is prolonged.