Antakya, Hatay
Architecture for All (Herkes İçin Mimarlık Derneği) (HiM)
HiM Design: Post-Disaster Reconstruction Plan
HiM is a platform with over 100 student and professional volunteers who collaborate to raise awareness about social problems and offer architectural and design solutions. Formed in Istanbul in 2011 and active in the 2013 Gezi Park forums, the group draws on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the “right to the city,” believing that urban space should be shaped collectively by those who inhabit and use it. The work shown here focuses on community spaces designed and built during the “mid and long-term” phases and illustrates the participatory mechanisms used in design, planning, and construction processes.
HiM’s projects were inspired in response to the scarcity and poor quality of socialization spaces in the tent and container cities where disaster victims live. HiM particularly considers the needs of children and women in post-disaster circumstances. The community center designs also allow for kitchen and play areas, toilets, animal shelter, vegetable beds, and shading details. Despite challenges and disappointments faced by HiM, HiM’s involvement in the region continues to be profoundly meaningful to the communities it serves.
Image Credits: HiM, ACHA
Çekmece Community Center was designed and built as an output of the Reviving Living Heritage in Antakya project launched by Architecture Sans Frontières UK (ASF-UK), HiM, and Hatay Deprem Dayanışması (Hatay Earthquake Solidarity, HDD), a local NGO which is the supporting membrane for many local NGOS, collectives, and individuals contributing to Hatay’s recovery efforts. Through in-person and online workshops and WhatsApp groups, the design process emerged, and construction was completed in December 2024. Local residents, architecture and landscape architecture students, teachers and architects, among others, participated. It was understood that the space needed to be suitable for many different functions, be able to hold more people than HDD’s existing space, and have a strong relationship with the adjacent container that was home to the Rimmen Womens’ Cooperative.
The Çekmece Community Centre has been actively used by HDD, Rimmen, and several other civil society organizations since that time, and also raises money through its use as an event space.