Our top priority is building earthquake-resistant, cost-effective housing that meets the community’s needs. We place a strong emphasis on sustainable and modular housing solutions that take into account local materials and cultural factors. We are dedicated to delivering high-quality housing that is both practical and environmentally conscious.
In phase two, we are working on the design. It’s essential to connect and align with many different stakeholder in order to fully understand the challenges they are facing. Especially the needs of local inhabitants should be taken into account when designing new homes. The design team is developing modular, long-term housing solutions by implementing local materials, flexibility, sustainability and culture into the design. To conclude this phase, in February 2024, a full scale prototype will be built in the Netherlands and tested on site.
As a group of professionals, professors, and students, we have been discussing and studying how to build long-term housing in a short period with an understanding of sustainability and innovation. We volunteerd to bring our knowledge of materials and innovative techniques to traditional village life. We aim to build the traditional village house layout with an innovative construction approach. We are currently studying the CLT material, its connections with other materials, and its behaviour in earthquake zones.
In order to understand the needs of local communities after a disaster, various fieldtrips to the location are necessarily. Currently three fieldtrips took place to the affected disaster area.
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 design which has come forward after the many talks with experts, the workshop week and the first and second fieldtrips was made through a collaboration with many different people. This group of students, architects, civil engineers, have all contributed voluntarily to the foundation Architectural Recovery Team. In the section below the design made by all these contributors will be explained. If you have any questions please feel free to contact our team.
After the field trips, we needed to translate our research outcomes into a design language. First we started with the social aspects of the topics we observed. These are safety, involvement of people and affordability.
Safety is an issue in two main areas; the fear of getting into big concrete blocks again and moving to new neighborhoods while leaving their community behind.
According to our research, after disasters involvement in rebuilding your own house, neighborhood, or city helps with the healing process and also helps us as architects to understand their lifestyle better. This way we can avoid top-down designing.
Affordability is a big topic since there is a very big damage to the economic life there. Long-term planning is the affordable key point here. How can we help the communities there to build their long-term house fast and conveniently?
To translate these issues as a solution to the technical approach we choose some keywords to focus on; modularity, adaptability, flexibility, and sustainability.
Modularity responds to easier and faster building.
Adaptability is the key to applying our design to different site shapes and urban characteristics.
Flexibility as an answer to different family scenarios and to extend the structure in time.
Sustainability helps to create more resistant communities against water and energy problems after disasters and maintaining their needs for longer periods.
As a result of this study and with the help of the technical parameters, we decided to create two different units to respond to two different issues.
As a result of this study and with the help of the technical parameters, we decided to create two different units to respond to two different issues.
