Restoration of a historic olive oil mill in Dikili

Abstract

Although many industrial heritage buildings, of which, the availability of the product they produced was lost and they were totally abandoned, the situation is different for olive oil mills which have been discussed as industrial heritage buildings since olive oil has never lost its vital importance. Some of them, which employed traditional extraction techniques, were converted to “continuous system” for faster production by changing their hardware equipment, while others persisted in using traditional techniques. But, many historic olive oil mills were abandoned since they could not compete with the new system. However, the taste obtained by traditional techniques has gained an increasing preference. This trend has attracted public attention not only in the taste of oil, but also in historic olive oil mills to conserve them as industrial heritage. Araser mill, subject of the study, is located in Bademli Village, of Dikili District of İzmir Province, but abandoned following the donation of its hardware to Rahmi Koç Industry Museum in İstanbul in 1999. While reflecting architectural, neoclassical style and socioeconomic features of its period, it witnessed the population exchange in 1922 which was an important historic event. Including architectural measurements, supplemented with photography, determination of structural and material problems documentation of the mill was done by observations during three-week survey period to define its historical, architectural and technological features as the values it possessed. The equipment donated to the museum was documented by a visit to the museum. In light of this information, a restoration proposal, which includes new function and interventions conforming to contemporary conservation principals, is presented.