An Architect as a Daughter-in-Law in a Low-Rise Family Apartment Building in Istanbul: An Ethnographic Toolkit for Insiders

ABSTRACT Family apartment buildings contain intense indicators in terms of the culture-place-behavior relationship. Research on family apartment buildings should involve spending considerable time in the family circle to observe the ordinariness of daily life and discover the cultural background while investigating these indicators. This study emerged from the first author's experiences during the data collection process of her Ph.D. thesis on behavior setting analysis of coexistence in a low-rise family apartment building in Istanbul. As a result of being an insider researcher, the methods of dealing with the methodological difficulties encountered in the field were questioned in this study. Being in the field with the multi-layered identity of researcher, architect, and daughter-in-law led to developing a creative data-collection toolkit. The identity pendulum, adjustable word spanner, and diachronic flashlight were the elements of this toolkit, enabling her to overcome the problems she faced in the field. The authors suggest that these tools could inspire researchers doing research in similar fields and facing problems of a similar nature.