SPACE June 2025 (No. 691)
SuperAdobe Children’s Library / ©Herkes İçin Mimarlık Archive
Following the devastating earthquakes that struck southeastern Türkiye on the 6th of February, 2023 – affecting 11 cities and over 15 million people – Architecture for All Association initiated a participatory post-disaster reconstruction plan. The ongoing effort includes a children’s library built with SuperAdobe techniques (the method theorised by Nader Khalili), timber-based structures as community centres, and an open public space designed and built with active involvement from local communities, collectives and NGOs, along with many participants.
The featured projects reflect the commitment to finding collective, ecological, and replicable solutions. Emphasising process over product, the approach prioritises communal agency in recovery. The documentation of workshops, co-design sessions, and the lived aftermath underlines this aim: rebuilding structures, trust, and collective capacity. These projects were developed with special attention to children’s and women’s needs while reflecting local production methods and everyday practices. Crucially, these spaces were envisioned as places for receiving aid and as platforms where earthquake survivors could host, share, and lead support activities, redefining the role of affected communities from passive recipients to active participants in shaping their recovery.
SuperAdobe Children’s Library / ©Herkes İçin Mimarlık Archive
The SuperAdobe Children’s Library was developed in response to the lack of social spaces and the poor quality of interaction areas within temporary settlements where many continued to live after the disaster. The structure, built using local materials, offers a quiet, safe, dignified space. Functioning as both a library and a multi-use learning...
