Challenging Practice Seminar: Inspired by Insights from Antakya

Authors: Jakleen Al-Dalal'a, Emma Carpenter, Chloe Loader and Dasha Moschonas

How do we design for the complex knot of post-earthquake revitalisation in Antakya: diverse stakeholders, masterplans, informal practices, cherished objects, and deeply held memories? That was the core question at our "Challenging Practice" seminar in Oxford this February. Fifteen built environment professionals came together to dissect and challenge our established design methodologies, using the revitalisation of Antakya after the 2023 earthquake as a critical lens. We explored how "living heritage" — the tangible and intangible threads of our histories and values — shapes our work.

How does our “living heritage” matter in the ways we work and interact with the places and people we engage with? How do we notice, account for, dismiss, support, or advocate for the practices, memories, objects, and emotions that our histories and futures are made of? 

Joana shared the evocative scent of her Somali incense burner, Tristan the legacy of his father's bracelet, Francesco and Esin the warmth of a wine-shaded verandah, and Chloe the intimacy of her mother's diaries. We asked: what walls have we built that separate these vital connections from our design processes, and why must we dismantle them? For two days, we became a "multiple-heads, multiple-hands" creature, exploring uncharted territories in design practice. Suddenly, it seemed as if we were called to collectively examine our definitions of “living heritage” — what it means to us personally, and how it connects to spaces, traditions, and identities. Holding a personal object or image that resonated with our heritage, we mapped our emotions onto paper, forging links between memory, materiality, and meaning. These intimate reflections set the stage for a much larger conversation—one that placed Antakya’s struggle at the heart of our inquiry.

Through presentations and discussions, we dissected the vulnerabilities that compounded the devastation of the earthquake. The Pressure and Release Model became our lens, illuminating the layered injustices—political, economic, and social—that turned a natural hazard into a disaster. Collectively, we identified key terms to dissect and definitions to challenge through our “jargon buster”. By considering terms that we usually may brush over, we delved much deeper into the theories and continuously challenged our own understandings.

But this was not a seminar for passive contemplation. We were tasked with action. With tools like the Strategy Cycle, we envisioned interventions that could empower Antakya’s people to reclaim their heritage. Drawing inspiration from global case studies, we crafted strategies, tested pilot projects, and rooted our approaches in lived realities. Bringing together a range of ages, professions, and experiences created an atmosphere of communal learning. Many of the participants were students who shared concerns that their career pathways would stray further from the community-driven, participatory principles we explored. The seminar concluded with an introspective session re-examining our own practices, drawing from our newfound knowledge on living heritage and questioning how we, as practitioners, might resist the forces that marginalise community-led approaches, ensuring that participatory design remains at the core of our work.

Key to the success of the seminar was this horizontal sharing of ideas and strategies. As with much of ASF-UK’s work, the seminar was designed to be as participative as possible, as opposed to traditional top-down principles. As facilitators, we learned as much — if not more — from the participants who chose to spend two days with us. We became participants alongside the students and professionals who joined us. For a few of the facilitators, this was our first experience leading seminars and workshops. We found the seminar enriching and exciting, discovering value in incorporating our own living heritage into our methods of facilitation.

So, how do we put this into practice? How do we ensure that the insights we unearthed in Oxford do not stay confined to the walls of a seminar room, but instead weave themselves into the way we teach, design, and advocate? Perhaps it starts with embracing discomfort—the discomfort of unlearning, of questioning our own assumptions, of recognising that expertise is never singular. It means carrying forward the idea that living heritage is not just something to be preserved but something to be lived, negotiated, and reimagined. It means stepping into design spaces with humility, listening before acting, and making space for the voices and practices too often dismissed or overlooked.

As we closed the seminar, we left with more questions than answers, but also with a renewed sense of purpose. We saw that co-design is not just a method, but a mindset—one that asks us to dismantle hierarchies, challenge extractive knowledge production, and actively co-create futures with the communities we work alongside. The task now is to continue this work beyond the seminar, in our respective roles and disciplines, ensuring that the collective learning of those two days continues to resonate, shift, and take root in the real world.