Reviving Living Heritage in Antakya
- Location: Cekmece, Antakya, Türkiye
- Date: 2024
- Programme: Change by Design
- Project Partners: Hatay Deprem Dayanismasi (Hatay Earthquake Solidarity), Herkes Icin Mimarlik, ASF-UK
- Activities: Advocacy/Learning and Capacity Building
ASF-UK’s work on repairing living heritage in Antakya fights to place people at the heart of the city’s future. Battling the current top-down reconstruction plans, which lack coordination amongst stakeholders and involvement from civil society, the concept of “living heritage” serves as a vital framework for understanding the complex landscape of post-earthquake reconstruction and envisioning the city's future.
Building on our 2023 public forum and collective statement, ASF-UK partnered with HDD and HiM to lead a series of workshops in Cekmece, a neighbourhood in the Defne District within the city of Antakya, Türkiye. The aim was to inform official policy and planning on reconstruction processes in Antakya on a community-led model that protects the city’s living heritage.
Workshops with residents consisted of four stages: diagnosis, dreaming, developing, and defining at different scales. The dwelling (micro) scale aimed to understand “home” conditions before and after the earthquake, through collaborative drawings, modelling and discussions with local residents. At the community (meso) scale, focus was directed towards understanding places, practices and networks. At the macro scale, the workshops aimed to understand the existing policy framework and stakeholders involved in the reconstruction process and how reviving living heritage can be integrated.
By engaging various parties through site visits, interactive discussions and workshops the result was a set of community engagement and empowerment mechanisms, and policy implications to further involve living heritage in reconstruction plans.
