Since the early 2000s, many village primary schools in Turkey have been closed with the argument that allocating resources is a burden due to the shortage of students; and the students of these schools gathered in the central village or district schools. As a result of this situation, approximately 17000 schools and also the buildings connected with the schools remained abandoned. Based on similar resource arguments, 49 elementary schools in Chicago, USA, in Black and Latino neighborhoods were closed in 2013. These examples in different geographies are examples of how local practices of global neoliberal policies are similar.

Against these closures, which lead to the socio-economic weakening of local communities and accelerate their displacement; there are architectural collectives that care about doing together with participatory methods. This presentation will be about the works of Herkes İçin Mimarlık (Architecture for All, HiM) Association, one of these collectives that designs and implements on- site, tries common resource creating processes and brings together different people and groups.

As a group aiming to come together with people from different professions to find solutions to social problems in Turkey and around the world from the fields of architecture and design; since 2012 HiM is working with villagers, universities and university students, other NGOs, municipalities and directorates about abandoned village schools or for the needs of the existing village primary schools in disadvantaged areas of Turkey. HiM also worked for the revitalization of Anthony Overton Elementary School in Chicago in 2019. In this paper, the improvised common labor and resource creation processes in HiM’s on-site design and implementation studies and the contributions of these works to support the lives of local communities will be discussed.