Palimpsest Cities: Gamification and Storytelling for Architectural History and Cultural Heritage Awareness

"<< Background >>The Palimpsest Cities project was launched to address the widespread disconnection between urban residents and the historical, multilayered environments they inhabit. Many people, including architecture students, overlook the rich architectural heritage around them, perceiving the current built environment as static and ahistorical. This lack of awareness contributes to the neglect and even destruction of shared European and global heritage, exacerbated by factors such as conflict and climate change.As the project's creator, I was particularly motivated by the realization that many architecture students at Alanya University had never engaged with the city’s historic sites, despite their academic focus and long-term residence. Recognizing this gap, the project developed and implemented innovative educational strategies aimed at fostering cultural heritage awareness among students and the broader public, including underrepresented groups.Another necessity that was identified was the urgent need to upgrade the architectural history and cultural heritage courses. In their current form, they were even alienating students from those fields, with their traditional, teacher-centered, memorization-based and often ineffective methods.<< Objectives >>As we recognized early on that if we want to foster meaningful cultural heritage awareness, we must begin by transforming educational practices. Starting from the higher education since most of the project team is from academia, we firstly wanted to overcome the inefficiency of architectural history and cultural heritage courses. However, we simultaneously wanted to amplify the project’s reach through public workshops, guided tours, seminars, and a mobile guide designed to make architectural heritage accessible to a broad and inclusive audience. The Palimpsest Cities project aimed to enhance the academic and pedagogical competences of the project team through an interdisciplinary, innovative architectural history and cultural heritage course; foster greater awareness of urban history and architectural heritage among architecture students at partner (and other) universities; extend this impact to the wider public —particularly children, persons with disabilities, the elderly, and low-income groups— through free field trips and workshops; develop a modular course adaptable to other multi-layered cities worldwide; and integrate innovative digital and creative educational approaches to replace conventional instruction methods.<< Implementation >>We firstly designed a new curriculum for the ""Palimpsest Cities"" course and members of the project team got training about the techniques, such as digital storytelling and gamification, to facilitate the design and implementation of this new course. A guide was prepared for using/adapting this syllabus for different target groups. Then, we conducted test lectures at two universities for three semesters and evaluated the impact/success of this course on students. We also conducted workshops and gamified field trips in four partners cities for the public. We designed and published a mobile app for the multilayered cities and created content for several cities, including Alanya, Istanbul and Volos. We held various dissemination activities from radio shows to podcasts, articles to conference presentations. We also reached out to other universities, departments and organizations through adaptations of the outputs of the project to various groups, including the implementation of the Palimpsest Cities course or its modules in three different universities. We produced Youtube videos to widespread the outputs of the project and uploaded each and every content on the project website, and publicized them on social media.<< Results >>The project produced concrete outputs including enhanced architectural and cultural heritage awareness, especially for architecture students as demonstrated with pre/end tests and student surveys/focus group interviews; strengthened connections between individuals and their cities, as observed from the feedbacks of the participants of the public workshops and other activities; and increased sensitivity toward the protection of the built environment, anticipated as an overall impact considering the full range of project results from academic articles to games designed for preschool children. Additionally, the project introduced an original, interdisciplinary educational approach that positioned learners in active roles, opening new directions in both architectural education and heritage conservation. It produced long lasting and adaptable outputs, which could be freely accessed by the whole public, e.g. the mobile app, or by the whole levels of education -from primary school to PhD, e.g. the syllabus of the course equipped with an online/video guide. The project also fostered strong synergies between academia, NGOs, and local institutions through its inclusive and collaborative framework; and it produced new projects and courses."