How to mend a broken heart: Foster + Partners envisions Antakya post-earthquake

Heartbreak struck on 6 February 2023 when a 7.8 category earthquake hit southwestern Turkey and neighboring Syria. More than 50,000 people lost their lives. More than 30,000 were injured. 70 percent of all homes turned to ash. Multiple cities were destroyed. Most survivors fled. The city of Antakya, the historic capital of Hatay province, suffered the biggest, most devastating shocks as tectonic fault lines in the area ruptured–previously solid ground slipped violently or liquefied.

Following an initial six-week pro-bono strategic study by Foster + Partners, the enormous task of rebuilding Antakya has been undertaken by the British architecture studio. The masterplan for the city’s urban revival has been crafted together with engineering consultant Buro Happold, transport planner Mic-hub, and Turkish practices DB Architects and KEYM Urban Renewal Centre and focuses on a 30 square kilometer area of the Hatay province’s capital district.

The studio seeks to simultaneously re-establish pre-existing characteristics of Antakya and enhance them–in this way encouraging displaced people to return home. What lies at the heart of the community-centric masterplan is improving circulation and open spaces, creating new districts, layering neighborhoods, and enhancing the connectivity between them. As approximately 80 percent of the buildings in Antakya were damaged in the earthquake, the masterplan focuses on maintaining the structures that have fortunately survived and creating an efficient and reliable road hierarchy of public transport, pedestrians, and cyclists around them. 

The masterplan’s road network follows the current pattern extending from Cumhuriyet Meydani and adds new, strategic connections that promote walkability. Cumhuriyet Meydani will be transformed into a pedestrianized and public transport-only zone.

Foster + Partners has identified areas around rivers that are at risk of flooding and will create green buffers and soft edges around them to provide more space for water runoff while also increasing nature-centered public spaces. The Asi River edge will become a new river park north of Ataturk Park with views of the old cityscape and majestic mountains and offer accessible waterside retreats for residents. 

Buildings located throughout Antakya’s newly identified 13 districts, each with its own commercial hubs and high streets evocative of the fabric that existed before the disastrous earthquake, will be designed to be earthquake-resilient. Constructing simple rectangular forms in a variety of heights, adequate separation between buildings, and avoiding setbacks and overhangs all lie at the forefront. 

Public plazas are planned to double as emergency gathering spaces–access wide enough for emergency service vehicles and enough space on the plazas to assemble emergency shelters are both prioritized. With their building massing designed to respond to local climate conditions, neighborhoods will function as superblocks. 

Fundamentally, Foster + Partners desires to retain Antakya’s pre-earthquake spirit, scale, and configurations–accessibility and inclusivity are viewed as crucial as well as the building of community hubs. Communal spaces will be designed to revitalize neighborhood relationships and create opportunities for residents to reconnect and re-establish their daily routines. New community plazas, playgrounds, and pocket parks will spread throughout Antakya. A mosaic of archaeological and historic religious features, Antakya is home to the ancient cities of Seleukeia Pieria and Antiokheia. Foster + Partners will restore sites such as the Uzun Bazaar and many churches, mosques, bathhouses, and synagogues.

Once called Antioch, Antakya was founded in 307 B.C. by the ancient Greeks. The city became one of the largest and most important cities along the Silk Road in the Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian, Abbasid, and Mamluk empires. Ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1517 until World War I, it was around 1917 that the French Mandate of Antioch began. Lasting until 1939, Atatürk then annexed the Hatay state and thus Antioch became Antakya. Its layered history indicative of its resilience and unbreakable spirit, the new masterplan for Antakya will retain the city’s historic scale, facade rhythm, and dense street configurations and integrate a new formula for a much-needed fresh start.