Restoration / Architecture · Design and Construction
Services · Antakya · Hatay
Reconstruction
If your historic building has collapsed, the process is not over. With the right documentation it can be brought back into existence both legally and physically. Reconstruction is the rebuilding of the original configuration established by the restitution, together with current structural safety requirements.
What is reconstruction?
Reconstruction is the rebuilding, on documentary evidence, of a cultural property that has been wholly or largely lost. In conservation it is an exceptional intervention: it is undertaken only where the documentation is sufficient, where the urban and cultural value of the building requires it, and where the board approves.
After the earthquakes of February 2023 a great many registered buildings in the Antakya Historic City Centre collapsed entirely. For most of them conventional restoration is not possible; but through the chain of excavation survey, restitution and reconstruction the fabric of the city can be re-established.
What is produced here is not a copy. The plan organisation, height envelope, facade order and construction technique remain faithful to the documents; but the structural system is recalculated to meet today’s seismic safety requirements.
How are fidelity to evidence and safety reconciled?
This is the real engineering question of reconstruction, and it is resolved separately on every parcel. In one of our projects a stone wall drawn at 25 cm in the earlier file was widened to 40 cm following structural assessment; the lath-and-plaster walls were set at 16 cm on the basis of traditional Antakya details.
In the same project the stair dimensions were corrected by recalculating the floor height and riser height — as a result the number of steps differs from the original. The stone walls on the upper floor were replaced with a lath-and-plaster frame system to reduce the mass load.
Deviations of this kind are not concealed; they are written into the project report with their justification and presented to the board as such. In conservation, transparency is part of fidelity.
On the elements that carry the building’s identity, on the other hand, no compromise is made: roof pitch, eaves projection, the rhythm of facade openings, courtyard organisation and joinery typology remain exactly faithful to the documents. In one of our projects all roofs were built with a 40 cm eaves projection and a 33 per cent pitch, as in the original records.
How does the process work for a collapsed building?
The debris-removal stage is critical, and this is where most rights are lost. If the debris is cleared wholesale with machinery, the building’s foundation traces, original stones and floor levels go with it — the evidence on which the restitution would rest disappears.
The right course is to remove the debris under board permit, in a controlled way and with archaeological excavation discipline, layer by layer. The data revealed in each layer is measured and photographed before removal proceeds. Ashlar and timber elements suitable for reuse are safely stacked on site.
Excavation survey, restitution and reconstruction projects are then prepared, and with board approval construction begins. The first step an owner should take in this process is to speak to a specialist before touching the debris.
Why is reconstruction an “exceptional case”?
It has to be said plainly: a rebuilt structure does not possess the historic fabric, the original material or the workmanship of the monument it replaces. A copy can revive the massing and spaces of a historic building only in formal terms; it cannot take the monument’s place. In short, it carries no documentary value of its own.
Reconstruction is therefore an operation accepted in the conservation literature only in exceptional cases, and it must be justified each time. The justification is usually this: the lost building was an indispensable part of a city’s silhouette or of a historic composition, and its absence breaks the whole.
For a reconstruction to be possible, the technical data that make rebuilding feasible — photographs, surveys and comparable graphic records — must exist. Where they do not, the right course is not to imitate the building but to hold the general character of the historic centre with a structure that draws on traditional forms while being readily legible as of our own time.
That is the justification we work from in Antakya: not individual parcels, but the continuity of the street silhouette and of the courtyard-house fabric. When a parcel stays empty, it is not only that property that is lost but the context of the registered buildings on either side of it.
How has the decision been made elsewhere?
After the Second World War, in cities such as Warsaw and Münster, monuments and elements of the urban fabric that were indispensable to the historic centre were rebuilt, or repaired as though rebuilt. Warsaw’s historic centre was raised again on the basis of twenty paintings made by Bernardo Bellotto at the end of the eighteenth century, together with engravings and surveys completed before the war.
In Venice, the campanile of San Marco, which collapsed from material fatigue in 1902, was rebuilt with the help of old photographs; in terms of completing the general appearance of the square, this is regarded as a case that leaves little room for argument.
Münster took a different route: the destroyed houses were rebuilt with regard for the traditional character so as not to break the integrity of the setting — but not as replicas. These three cases show how one problem was solved at three different scales: document-based rebuilding, the rebuilding of a symbolic monument, and infill faithful to character.
What they share is this: in none of them was the decision taken on the grounds that “it fell down, so let us put up a new one”. Each time the documents were sought first, and the building’s role within the whole was argued afterwards.
Legal basis
Reconstruction is assessed within the framework of Article 15 of the Venice Charter and the Riga Charter. The Riga Charter ties rebuilding to exceptional conditions: the cultural significance of the building, the sufficiency of the documentation and social necessity are sought together. In Türkiye the work is subject to the approval of the Regional Conservation Board under Law No. 2863.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is reconstruction?
If your historic building has collapsed, the process is not over. With the right documentation it can be brought back into existence both legally and physically. Reconstruction is the rebuilding of the original configuration established by the restitution, together with current structural safety requirements.
My building collapsed completely — is its registration cancelled?
The physical loss of a building does not by itself cancel its registration. The parcel retains its protected status and anything built on it remains subject to board permission. This is in fact a right: with the correct documentation the reconstruction of the building can be requested.
The debris has already been cleared — is it too late?
Not too late, but harder. Even when the debris has been cleared, foundation traces usually remain in the ground and can be uncovered by excavation. Combined with the 1929 cadastral sheets, the photographic archive, any earlier surveys and oral history, restitution is still possible on most parcels.
Isn’t reconstruction “fake history”?
This objection is taken seriously in the conservation literature and explains why reconstruction is an exceptional intervention. The distinction lies here: pastiche produces an image with no documentary basis. Reconstruction rests on evidence, shows the limits of that evidence openly through a reliability legend, and records every deviation in its report. The aim is not to imitate the past but to sustain a documented identity.
Are reconstruction and replica the same thing?
No. A reconstruction rebuilds a lost building on its own site and on the basis of its own documents. A replica erects a copy of a building somewhere else; it carries no historical meaning, though it can be valuable as a way of sustaining a construction technique and keeping a tradition alive. The work we carry out in Antakya is reconstruction: the building is raised again on its own parcel, on its own foundation traces.
What use are the salvaged original stones and timbers?
They are the only tangible link that strengthens a reconstruction’s relationship with the historic building. Carefully separating and storing the surviving pieces of the lost structure — door and window jambs, ceiling ornament, mouldings, ashlar blocks — and using every original piece that can be recovered in the new building moves the copy one step away from being merely a copy. This is why sorting during debris clearance is critical.
Only part of my building is standing, not all of it. Is this still reconstruction?
No, it becomes a mixed operation. The surviving part is a matter for restoration — it is consolidated and, where required, reintegrated. The collapsed part is a matter for reconstruction. Reintegration requires sound evidence of the original design; where half of a bay survives, for instance, the repeating elements and the symmetry allow it to be completed. Which intervention has been chosen for each element is shown separately on the restoration sheet.
Source
The principal reference for the theoretical framework and technical definitions on this page is Zeynep Ahunbay, Tarihi Çevre Koruma ve Restorasyon (Historic Environment Conservation and Restoration), YEM Yayın, Istanbul 2009. The principles also rest on the Venice Charter (1964) and Turkish Law No. 2863 on the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Property. The fieldwork and the assessments concerning Antakya are our own.