Our priority is building earthquake-resistant housing that meets the community’s needs.
We place a strong emphasis on sustainable and modular housing solutions that take into account sustainable materials and combine those with local and cultural factors. We are dedicated to delivering high-quality housing that is both practical and environmentally conscious.
After the workshop, a smaller design team continued the development of long-term housing solutions. From the start, connecting and aligning with a wide range of stakeholders was essential to fully understand the challenges the region faces. Most importantly, the needs of local inhabitants were central to our design process.
We focused on how to deliver long-term, modular housing in a short timeframe while integrating sustainability, innovation, and local culture. Our designs incorporate flexible layouts, and environmentally sustainable building techniques.
To conclude this phase, a full-scale prototype will be constructed in the Netherlands in March 2025 and tested on site. Throughout the design process, we maintain a flexible and agile approach, ensuring that every aspect is considered and adapted to the realities on the ground.
While reconstruction efforts and masterplans have focused on city centers, surrounding villages have often been overlooked. Residents of these villages still remain in temporary housing, unable or unwilling to relocate due to strong ties to their land.
Large-scale demolitions and short-term solutions such as tents and containers have resulted in unsafe, unsanitary, and uncomfortable living conditions, causing both physical and environmental challenges, including poor hygiene and lack of privacy. Later in the rebuilding process, villagers were offered apartments in newly built city-like neighborhoods, but these often failed to meet the cultural and spatial needs of rural households.
Additionally, all heavy concrete buildings were severely damaged, leading to urban-rural displacement and overcrowding in villages. Current shelter solutions tend to be monotypic, offering neither long-term viability nor adaptability to diverse needs.
Our work focuses on long-term, on-site housing projects that use sustainable and lightweight materials, avoiding heavy concrete due to safety concerns by residents in earthquake-prone areas. Our main target group are the villages affected by the earthquake.
We are currently exploring the use of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), studying its connections with other materials and its performance in earthquake zones.
Our aim is to create housing that is safe, culturally appropriate, sustainable, and responsive to the diverse needs of affected communities. Our design focus also relies on a flexible and agile approach which is needed while designing for changing communities.
To understand the needs of local communities after a disaster, it was essential for us to conduct field trips to the affected areas during different phases of our process. The team has undertaken several trips to the region, including four official visits organized from the Netherlands.
During our first field trip, we visited various cities affected by the earthquake. We explored each location, spoke with families who lost their homes, and connected with local municipalities to determine how we could support the area. We also visited reference projects focused on short-term housing solutions and discussed how they initiated their efforts. Would you like to read more about our first informal fieldtrip?
During our second visit, our main focus lied on choosing a specific village, making all the connections with local stakeholders and viewing the different plots where our first prototype could be build.
A second aim of this fieldtrip was to participate in the documentary of NPO1, where Jeroen Pauw visited the affected area and to portray the horrible disaster that took place in the South of Turkiye. The documentary was broadcasted on the 11th of December, 2023.
Our third fieldtrip as a team has come to an end! During this very productive week we spend time with the family for who we will build our first prototype. We talked to them about their previous house, their daily routines in the village and explained our goals and designs. Next to that we had meetings with the municipality, local construction engineers and logistic companies. We visited Antakya, and met with different associations working for the recovery of Hatay and its people.
The main objectives of the fourth field trip was to oversee the construction site of the room unit construction, check in with the family, ensure the foundation work was progressing correctly, and verify the safe arrival of the core unit on-site.
To conclude, we can say it was a very rewarding field trip — not only because we saw real progress on site, but also because we had the opportunity to speak properly with the locals, and visit various different sites in the region which showed how the people from Hatay were rebuilding their lives again. Being able to walk through the nearly complete prototype gave us joy, and energy to finalise the project and start thinking about the future of the Architectural Recovery Team.
The design presented here is the result of extensive collaboration and learning. Following numerous discussions with experts, a dedicated workshop week, and two field trips, the concept was developed through the combined efforts of a diverse group of volunteers, including students, architects, and civil engineers, all contributing to the Architectural Recovery Team.
In the section below, we highlight the design created collectively by these contributors and explain its key features.
As a result of this problem statement study and with the help of research into new innovation, we decided to create two different units to respond different issues. With these different solutions, we also aim to tackle problems over a wider range over time, and spread out costs, and hope to meet individuals needs over a long term period.
The Core Unit is a prefabricated wooden structure designed to provide the essential facilities at the heart of a home. Measuring 5.8 × 2.45 meters, it includes a kitchen, bathroom, and technical room to meet immediate basic needs.
The Core Unit addresses critical challenges around water and electricity. By providing functional facilities, it allows people to avoid relying on heavily damaged buildings, offering a safe and ready-to-use solution. Tents can be attached to the unit, creating an initial shelter around it while communities begin their recovery.
Once the emergency state has passed, the core unit can be extended with the additional room units on site, to accommodate inhabitatns from singles or families of up to seven people. While the core unit is a standardised timber construction, the room units will be constructed by the inhabitants with the help of a manual produced by ART. This manual will provide guidance on construction techniques and material adaptability, thereby mitigating any structural differences.