Reviving Living Heritage in Antakya 

  • Location: Çekmece, Antakya, Türkiye 
  • Date: 2024
  • Programme: Change by Design 
  • Project Partners: Deprem Dayanışması Derneği (Hatay Earthquake Solidarity Association), Herkes Için Mimarlık, ASF-UK
  • Activities: Advocacy/Learning and Capacity Building

ASF UK's work on repairing living heritage in Antakya seeks to expand the room for the city's inhabitants to shape reconstruction in ways that reflect what they value and how they live. Current reconstruction plans lack coordination between stakeholders and offer limited room for civil society to contribute. In this context, "living heritage" (the places, people, practices, knowledge and memories that make a city) offers a way to understand the complex landscape of post-earthquake reconstruction and to imagine the city's future.

Building on our 2023 public forum and collective statement, ASF UK, Hatay Deprem Dayanışması and Herkes İçin Mimarlık (HiM) launched a joint project, "Reviving Living Heritage in Antakya". As part of it, ASF UK and Hatay Deprem Dayanışması held a two-week community planning workshop in June 2024 in Çekmece, a neighbourhood in Antakya's Defne district. The workshop aimed to influence official policy and planning for reconstruction by demonstrating a community-led approach that protects the city's living heritage. Alongside it, HiM and HDD coordinated the participatory design and construction of the Çekmece Community Centre, a shared space for information and gathering.

Adapting ASF UK's Change by Design methodology, the workshop moved through diagnosis, dreaming and development, working at three scales. At the dwelling scale, participants interviewed residents in their homes to understand living conditions before and after the earthquakes. At the community scale, they mapped the neighbourhood's places, practices and networks through walks, sketches and discussions. At the city scale, they examined the policy framework and the stakeholders shaping reconstruction, and how living heritage can be brought into it.

More than 25 students and professionals and over 50 residents took part through site visits, interviews, discussions and modelling exercises. The workshop produced six collective aspirations from Çekmece residents, which they presented at a public interactive exhibition and event at Çekmece's Neighbourhood House. The event brought together residents, representatives of local authorities and civil society to discuss residents' own vision for the neighbourhood and explore ways to work together.