Foster + Partners’ masterplan sets scene for new creation of old Antakya

The terrible earthquakes that hit south-western Turkey and neighbouring Syria in February 2023 left devastated cities and settlements across a wide area. The city of Antakya – site of ancient Antioch and capital of Hatay province – suffered the biggest shocks as tectonic fault lines in the area ruptured. Previously solid ground slipped violently or liquefied. The effect was like concentrated warfare: more than 24,000 died in one night; more than 30,000 were injured; 70 per cent of all homes were destroyed. Most of the surviving population fled. 

Along with the immediate multi-national relief effort, thoughts rapidly turned to the planned reconstruction of Antakya. The organisation that took the initiative was the Türkiye Design Council (TDC), a non-governmental organisation which began a rapid process of design development in consultation with the people of the province. They simultaneously built up a roster of likely architects and engineers, both local and from overseas. And so it was that Bruno Moser. head of the Urban Design Group at Foster + Partners, found himself and his team in the wrecked city just a month after the disaster. 

‘It was heartbreaking,’ he says. ‘You looked in the rubble and saw people’s photos, pieces of furniture – traces of life.’ That October the practice was commissioned to develop a masterplan for a pilot area, learning from the urban and human history of Antioch and the often forcefully expressed views of the surviving affected inhabitants. Now the masterplan is completed and approved. The enormous task of rebuilding an initial urban area of 30km² is perhaps optimistically planned by the authorities to be done over 10 years. The wider city, in which many other architects are involved, covers 700km².

Nobody for a moment considered abandoning the city and building elsewhere, says Serhat Basdogan, general manager of the TDC and associate professor at Yildiz Technical University. The same overall capacity of the city before the earthquake – its homes and commercial buildings – will return to a place that will be recognisably Antakya. For obvious reasons it cannot be identical: one thing that is certain in this seismically active region is that earthquakes will sooner or later happen again, and that must inform the construction, form and siting of the new buildings and streets. But Basdogan talks of the spirit and history of this trading city as something driving everything else: ‘It’s a very special place for us. It’s a multi-layered culture, a very old Greek and Roman city. At the same time you had Jewish people, Orthodox Christian, Arabs, Alawites; altogether 18 or 20 different religions, all living there over thousands of years.’  

Sited on its historic Levantine trading route following the Orontes river, close to both the Syrian border and the Mediterranean, its continued existence is seen as a priority both strategically and for the sake of its traumatised inhabitants. This, says Basdogan, is why speed is essential: if the process of rebuilding takes too long, the displaced population will increasingly drift elsewhere and lose its identity. Hence the way the TDC rapidly commissioned the pilot reconstruction masterplan.

This is a collaborative affair. Led by Fosters, the team includes Buro Happold on engineering and Milan-based transportation specialist MIC-HUB, along with Turkish practices DB Architects and KEYM Urban Renewal Centre. It presents a city of boulevards broadly following the existing street plan radiating north-west from the river, but with buildings set back from those areas of land – usually near watercourses – which are prone to liquefaction in earthquakes. This allows for plenty of new public spaces, especially by the Orontes in the centre. 

It’s a granular approach: there are 13 new districts, each with its own clear centre or ‘high street’, with public buildings such as schools, in turn broken down into neighbourhoods with smaller, predominantly pedestrian- and cycle-based communicating streets. Active travel aside, public transport planning is bus-based: nobody is planning to build a subway system in a seismic area, and Moser points out that the city is not so huge as to need one anyway. 

The area of the masterplan, says Moser, was originally built up only over the past century.  Because of the contraction of the rebuilt area to firmer ground and a proposed overall reduction in height, that built area is redistributed but not extended. ‘What we are trying to do is reduce the risk of sprawl, make the footprint more compact,’ says Moser.

There are elements of design coding in play here. Some of this is engineering-led: Buro Happold has studied the quake resistance of various building forms and concluded that the most vulnerable are perimeter blocks, while the strongest are rectangular shapes with up to 1:3 width-to-length ratio, structural continuity, and basements as ground stabilisers. The appearance of every building can be different, says Moser. Diversity of architecture was always  one of the attributes of the place. But certain aspects of the old city, such as generally solid walls with punched windows, give design cues. Orientation and massing is organised in response to sun direction and prevailing winds.  

So now comes the big build. A priority area by the river is in the hands of local firms of architects, peer-reviewed by Fosters. Others will pitch in soon. One would not bet against Fosters doing individual buildings in time, but none is commissioned yet. As to the timescale, it’s a balancing act. Turkey has a large and active construction sector but the supply of labour, materials, money and design time in the country will also be needed elsewhere. How it all pans out will hold lessons for other parts of the world urgently needing reconstruction, from Ukraine to Gaza. 

In numbers

Damaged dwellings 240,000
Buildings damaged by earthquake 90%
Displaced population 850,000