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How can leaders equip communities with the conservation skills they need to become resilient and self-sufficient?
“Contemporary heritage preservation is not about protecting pretty things. Sustainability and heritage and go hand-in-hand, and they're mutually reinforcing,” says Dr. Banu Pekol, former cultural heritage and capacity building manager for the KORU Project.
“And in the end, you design your work in such a way that you eliminate the need for yourself, that when you leave the field, things continue on their own,” she says.
In this audio interview Pekol joins FT Longitude’s Meg Wright to discuss how communities can bring heritage and infrastructure together to regenerate neighbourhoods, celebrate tradition and support the planet.
Interview transcript:
Dr. Banu Pekol: Today, contemporary heritage preservation is not about protecting pretty things. We talk about sustainability and heritage and say they go hand-in-hand, and they're mutually reinforcing. In the KORU Project, we really challenged these silos of heritage and sustainability because we wanted to recognise that if you reuse buildings you will be treading very carefully on the planet. And that's a win-win.
VO: This interview is part of an audio series produced by FT Longitude in partnership with The Royal Commission for AlUla.
Meg Wright: With one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, Turkey is a country as culturally rich as it is diverse. It is home to 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and its unique blend of East and West makes Turkey globally renowned for its art, history and architecture.
I’m Meg Wright, and in this series we explore new visions for community development, tourism and cultural landscapes. Each episode we take a closeup look at a community or region that is drawing on lessons from the past to build for a sustainable future.
Today we're in the city of Mardin, located on the southern Turkish border about 20 miles from Syria. Like many other historic cities, Mardin faces a clear dilemma: Its houses are old, some in disrepair, and many not equipped for modern living. And yet its heritage, culture and architecture are unique and well worth preserving.
So, how can leaders equip communities with the conservation skills they need to become resilient and self-sufficient?
Joining me to discuss this is Dr. Banu Pekol, who works on urban transformation at the BMW Foundation and is the former cultural heritage and capacity building manager for the KORU Project.
Banu, thank you so much for joining me.
Dr. Banu Pekol: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Meg Wright: Banu, I wondered if you could begin maybe just by giving our listeners a brief overview of the KORU Project? So, what was it, and where does the name KORU actually come from?
Dr. Banu Pekol: So, koru in Turkish means directly protect, and so we used it also as an acronym, but in general it just means protect. And it was one of the projects that the Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage based in Istanbul, but working all around Turkey, undertook. It was a multi-year project and it took place predominantly within Southeast Turkey in Mardin.
And it was basically about developing and strengthening skills as well as abilities and resources needed for the cultural heritage in Turkey to be protected and thrive.
So we found this 200-year-old house in Mardin, a very middle-class house, because restoring a mansion isn't going to be an example for the community at all. And we wanted to use this place as a showcase for conservation skills and had all of our training. So we called it Tamirevi, which means repair house, it was the heart of the project. And everything we did passed through this building. All the trainings we did, all the examples we talked about, all the technologies we tried them out and implemented them in this so-called restoration lab. And also, building sites usually have barriers, and you can't enter them. And we had this huge banner which could be seen from quite far away, and it was hung in front of the building, and it said, "Do enter the work area," as opposed to don't. And we said please contact this number, email this email to arrange tours of the work site.
And we would have separate tours for school children. We would have separate ones for adults and the actual architect or stonemason who was working there would take you around and explain the whole process. So we wanted this to also be a process where the community saw how much effort went to this building, but also how much it was valued and the work that went into and the knowledge that went into restoring it. So we included all these energy efficiency measures like fitting photovoltaic panels, installing heat pumps, and we explained what those were and how they would benefit the building. And your questions about what does it bring to the community is a very good one because today, contemporary heritage preservation is not about protecting pretty things. We talk about sustainability and heritage and say they go hand-in-hand, and they're mutually reinforcing.
And we, in the KORU Project, we really challenged these silos of heritage and sustainability because we wanted to recognise that if you reuse buildings you will be treading very carefully on the planet. And that's a win-win. And we really wanted to shift the dial on Turkey's kind of knock it down and rebuild attitude because communities want what they know, what they are used to seeing, where they grew up in, to be visible throughout their lives. And if, like it's usually done, developers don't look at upgrading or adapting buildings, they will continue to reach for the wrecking ball as a default option and people will lose the collective memory in terms of visual indicators around them.
Meg Wright: I think one thing that strikes me is that it's common that we see NGOs and charitable initiatives actually dedicated to infrastructure and architectural restoration, but few really start from a position of culture and heritage as the KORU Project does. Could you explain maybe the thinking behind that approach and how it played out in the city of Mardin?
Dr. Banu Pekol: So, what I've seen is that if you prioritise restoring a palace or similar symbolic building, this is an indicator of an agenda that is set not by the needs of the communities, but by the interests of national governments.
So yes, culture is important, but you really can't enjoy it if you don't have a safe place to go home to, to sleep, or food to eat, because it's a fundamental human right to have shelter, to have a home. And if basic infrastructure is badly lacking in your home, what good is it if you have your famous minaret reconstructed? So, that's why we always put community first. Heritage protection is about people more than objects. That's the premise of this.
So, in Mardin, every step we took was based on interviews with the community, stakeholder meetings where we brought together representatives of the community, people from the municipality, people from cultural institutions, religious authorities, and we spoke together what they would need. We prepared some proposals, revised them all together and implemented them together, involving them at every step.
Meg Wright: How then would you go about describing the link between heritage and the built environment in this particular context?
Dr. Banu Pekol: The heritage is the city in a way. And people are very, very conscious of the value of the city. However, when you look at heritage preservation, as you said, there are so many houses there which are in disrepair. And this has led to the local population leaving the historic centre and going to the new Mardin, as they call it, to apartment buildings nearby. So leaving buildings in disrepair adds also to the rising inequality in the region. What I mean is that only the desperate people will accept to live in these extremely poor living conditions.
So we aim to help local residents and craftsmen and everybody else there understand that these buildings are important, which they already knew and heard, but that they could go back and use these buildings with basic retrofits and maintenance.
Meg Wright: I also mentioned in the intro, obviously Mardin being in geographically quite an interesting location because it is so close to Syria. And of course we're talking not just about cultural heritage preservation, but we're also talking in some ways about building community resilience.
How do you go about building that sort of resilience in an area of ongoing conflict? And what does self-sufficiency actually look like for communities in this region in particular?
Dr. Banu Pekol: When we talk about sustainable communities or regenerative communities, what I would define that is a very holistic living system, which is place-based. So based in, for example, Mardin, where everything is interdependent, where the residents, humans understand that we're partners with the rest of life in a very co-creative, interdependent way.
So we were trying also to shift that for them to understand that by preserving these buildings, they're actually contributing back to their own wellbeing as well as to the planet because these buildings are inherently built to be energy efficient with their thick walls. The way of living they provide is very communal, which is a spirit of the region, so to speak.
There's this thing called the Heritage Cycle by Simon Thurley. And I see that as a very good example for explaining what we also did with KORU. You can start at any point of this cycle, so I’ll start at understanding. We say by understanding heritage, you value it. By valuing it, you want to care for it. By caring for it, you help people enjoy it. And by enjoying it, you'll have more of a thirst to understand it. So this can continue cycling.
And we also look at context, as you said, Mardin is very close to the Syrian border. On a clear day, we can see over Mesopotamia into Syria, and you need to know how to respond to different contexts if you really want to innovate.
And in heritage preservation, you're always working in complex contexts, not complicated, but complex. And this really requires a fundamental shift in people's behaviour, in their values, in how they accept some norms.
So as heritage professionals working in conflict or post-conflict areas, we are in a sense, cultural heritage peacebuilders because we work for a positive peace. And that's the phrase that John Galton coined.
And it's not just the absence of violence because what you want in positive peace is people to have the attitude and for institutions and structures to also create and sustain peaceful societies.
So in this sense, I see working on heritage preservation as a method of furthering positive peace. It doesn't matter which society has created the building you're living in, which nation or religion has created the artefact you are appreciating in the museum, which recipe you're cooking.
Because once you plug it into this heritage cycle, you've also taken a step towards establishing this positive peace. And in the sense our work is really soft diplomacy. It's soft diplomacy because we don't use hard power, we contribute to the fight against this illusion of separation and polarisation.
And we really try and strive to make societies understand that the multicultural multi-religious heritage of any given place, for example, Anatolia, is a richness which we should protect and see as our collective wealth.
Meg Wright: So it's now been four years since the KORU Project's completion, how do you view its long-term legacy? And perhaps more importantly, how do you ensure that the benefits continue long after the volunteers have left the site?
Dr. Banu Pekol: From the beginning, we wanted the legacy of the project, like any project you do, I guess as an NGO, to last well beyond its official end date, so we had an exhibition in Tamirevi, we prepared one, both in English and Turkish, that showcases the work we did in the building. It provided information on how you can replicate energy-efficiency retrofits in historic buildings to make them sustainable, to make them livable, and really raise their quality, and also lower the bills, of course.
And we also continue our legacy through our publications, which we developed and published throughout the project. And they're not something on the side, they actually supplement the core work of the project. They're a free resource online. And they include, for example, a glossary of architecture preservation terms for laymen, because architects and professionals always speak with these big words and nobody understands it and it's quite daunting. So we wanted to give a nice primer for anybody who doesn't know what they're talking about.
And we also had, like everything we did, a practical component, where these historic home residents and monument keepers received hands-on training on historic materials and their maintenance.
We prepared a historic building maintenance calendar for them, saying what they should look out for and do every month of the year. And later we published the first book in Turkish for historic house residents, which covered a very wide range of subjects, ranging from finding a house to cleaning it. And one other example of our legacy, which we didn't plan, it was a very nice surprise, was something that happened in the Mardin municipality.
In the project, we arranged the first ever encounter between the conservation department in the municipality, which is responsible for giving basic restoration permits, and their target groups, so the historic home tenants. The tenants didn't even know that this department existed or that they should apply for permits. So, we built that bridge.
What made us happiest was that inspired by our work and this bridge and their encounters with the community and the questions they got from the community, this department in question produced a booklet outlining how the community could benefit from them, their work. I think this really shows the importance of non-governmental organisations in the cultural heritage sector, because you are there to find what's unspoken, what hasn't been bridged before. And in the end, you design your work in such a way that you eliminate the need for yourself, that when you leave the field, things continue on their own.
Meg Wright: That's incredible and, I think, really quite a testament to just how successful the project was overall. Finally, Banu, what is the number one lesson you think other places in the world can take from the KORU Project?
Dr. Banu Pekol: I feel that it's being adaptable and accepting what comes, because you will never know who will knock on your door throughout your project, and you should be open to talking to them, to listening to their issues, because no conservation project can be replicated. Every case is unique, every person, every community is unique, and you cannot have one recipe that fits all.
This is widely known in academic conservation, but when you go into communities, you should really go to everybody with a fresh mind, fresh eye, and without any sort of prejudice. Because everybody has their own reasons for why they say something, why they act. As heritage professionals, we try to find the interests that lie behind why they want to preserve a building, why they want to get rid of it, why they don't want to talk to another religious sector, and really don't appreciate seeing their building, hearing their call to prayer.
It's really being open-minded and trying to listen to, as I said, what's unspoken, what's unknown, but also keeping the joy in this work because what you're doing is contributing to history, which is much longer than you, and keeping humble.
Meg Wright: Absolutely. I think a really important lesson for us all, actually. Dr. Banu Pekol, thanks so much for joining me.
Dr. Banu Pekol: Thank you. It's been a joy.