The contractor has 21-acre site area decided to build 14 earth-sheltered dwellings. By this decision, it has been shown importance of the earth sheltered building energy gains: Energy Consumption, Noise Reduction, Aesthetics and Land use. One of the more common motivations for building an earth sheltered structure, like Durudeniz is to blend the building in with its natural surroundings. This is often the case on rural sites where the owner wishes to build a dwelling but also retain the ‘untouched’ beauty of the natural landscape.

Double use of the land, house underneath, garden on top, means earth sheltered houses can be built on smaller blocks than conventional houses and still have sufficient space for outdoor living. This makes earth sheltered housing particularly useful for low or medium — density housing developments, an area of construction that will no doubt increase in the future as the world population grows and cities become larger and larger.

The main ecological criteria considered in the Settlement are: Green roofs, Sky gardens, Edible landscape, Waste cycles, Passive heating and Natural ventilation, Biologic diversity etc.

A comparative study has been conducted for the earth-sheltered building and four sides on the land cases for same building conditions. (Eryildiz, 2002) Heat losses and auxiliary energy loads are calculated as:

Annual heat losses Auxiliary heat load (annual)

Earthsheltered 5.050 kWh(Q1) 43.24 kWh/m3

Ontheland 9.210kWh(Q2 78.85 kWh/m3

Only one design criterion taken into consideration changes the results in very large scale Q1 annual / Q2 annual = 5050 kWh / 9210 kWh = 0 .5483

The ratio shows the big difference on the heat gains and the importance of the energy efficient design.