A READING OF WORSHIP PLACE WHICH CHANGED ITS FUNCTION OVER THE CITY IDENTITY; GIRESUN KAPUSEN CHURCH

In the history of architecture, worship places are the first public constructions people came together. These structures, which direct the writing of cities' histories, give identity to the cities, play an active role in the recognition and recollection of the cities, emerge as a periodical witness or symbolic structure. In this sense, worship places have a symbolic value in the urban identity, which is shaped by different civilizations and events at different periods, in terms of public identity seek. They are transformed into a means that easily draws attention within the urban fabric, and most importantly, identifies the identity of the public space locations, formal differences, and dimensions. However, the fact that some of the worship places complete their lives leads to bringing new functions to these structures that are an important part of public identity which in return also affect their sustainability. On one hand, it is desired to protect their symbolic history, architectural and cultural values as much as possible with their reuse areas. On the other hand, it is aimed to bring new purposes appropriate to the character and position of the building as well as being economically viable. Therefore, these new functions are the most basic way of ensuring that worship places remain in use. However, a very small proportion of the worship structures may be faced with these new uses due to often being opened to the use of members of a different religion because of community change or being transformed into the museum. In this sense, the structure of the study is the discussion on refunctioned worship structures in the context of public identity seek. In our country, there are many worship structures left from those exchanged, who had to leave Anatolia, following the Lausanne Treaty and Giresun Capuchin Church is one of these structures. Capuchin Church, built at the beginning of 19th century by French Capuchin Priests and was transformed into a children's library in 1967, is different from many other church structures converted into mosque or museum. For this reason, the aim is of this study is to discuss refunctioning of the Capuchin Church as children's library after the exchange in the context of public identity seek