CIPA 2003 XIX 1 International Symposium, 30 September — 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
37 
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Destruction of vernacular habitat at the end of the 1980's 
platform_c offers all its available resources for helping to save 
Cappadocia’s heritage. In concrete terms the following activities 
have been planned and partly realized to support a sustainable 
future development in Cappadocia: 
Organization of an international and interdisciplinary 
academy with symposia, workshops and conferences 
on Cappadocia related topics. 
Creation of pilot projects on how to reuse and restore 
traditional buildings and develop a contemporary 
architecture that respects and protects Cappadocia’s 
unique environment and culture. 
Establishment of a „Cappadocia Documentation 
Centre“, where all Cappadocia related knowledge is 
collected and accessible. 
Creation of a regional, national and international 
expert-network of people who support the protection 
and sustainable development of the Cappadocia 
region. 
platformc, which had its second meeting in September 2002 is 
willing to contribute its expertise to help building a better future 
for the Cappadocia region and is looking forward to collaborate 
on that aim with all involved institutions. 
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Further more, even well intact cave houses have been destroyed 
with bulldozers by local municipalities. Until today there are no 
regular meetings extending the official protection board, which 
is mainly responsible for giving building- and restoration 
permissions. Even the official local decision making bodies are 
not really trained for seeing the important value of details and 
the complexity of the fast changing region and are therefore not 
able to give proper advice. The different working groups on the 
Cappadocia region do not really cooperate with each other or 
cross contact in order to present effective professional teams, an 
there are still no public meetings explaining the needs and 
strategies applied for the region to the local population. 
3. METHODS OF RESEARCH AND SURVEY 
3.1. ,,platform_c“ 
One of the major tasks of the academy was a development of a 
wider network of specialists with some specific interest in 
Cappadocia. In September 2000 the first platform_c meeting 
was organized to invite architects, town planners, cultural 
anthropologists, historians, artists and other specialists from 
disciplines involved in the protection and sustainable 
development of historic areas. As a result of this first 
symposium a manifesto was written and handed in to the local 
authorities, focusing on the following questions and subjects: 
How can we protect and restore Cappadocia’s natural 
and cultural heritage in a more comprehensive way? 
What are the future and modernization concepts for 
Cappadocia that will respect its unique character? 
platform c proposed that a powerful and transparent regional 
management board, which consists of representatives oi all 
governmental and administration bodies involved in 
Cappadocia, non-governmental organisations and independent 
national and international experts from different fields, should 
be developed. The first symposium also came to the conclusion 
that a comprehensive regional protection and development plan 
should be worked out by national and international experts. 
3.2. Documentation of a restoration project in Göreme 
An „organic“ approach. 
The spatial base of the Cappadocia Academy is the private 
property of the author, who bought an old traditional 
Cappadocian house ruin with several added cave-rooms in 
1998. The property, which consists of almost 20 rooms of 
different character, has been restored in an organic and 
traditional way and also in respect to modern needs and 
function. After cleaning the decayed site of rubble, a detailed 
documentation of the architectural relicts had been worked out 
by a group of architects and students from the Technical 
University of Berlin, using traditional classical methods of 
architectural measuring and photography to prepare ground 
plans and sections of the building and the added cave-rooms. 
Documentation of the Cappadocia Academy site 
in the village of Gorerne