URLA CITY PLAZA

A small scale town: Urla, on the west coast of İzmir, which offers diffent types of lives and patterns with its port side, its city center on the inner land, its new residential areas, its olive groves, small vilages with vineyards and traditional textures.

In spite of new inharmonious developments and its crocked pattern, Urla still has traces of its tradional settlement textures. On the other hand as an administrative, commercial and social focus the city center has some distinct problems, leading population increase, change in user profile and lack of parking area.

After municipality decided to an intervention to this situation, old bus station area in the city center is determined as the project area. This project aims to coordinate the social and functional life of the city center, which will regularize the vehicle and pedestrian circulation, and offer new opportunities to the existing social life.

In the aim of this, existing urban space and the commercial area next to it were hadled together. At that commercial area, a low dense two storied commercial bulding with 'L' shape and with two parking storey under the ground was designed. Which is in unison with the existing city texture and axes. This L shape building is aimed to describe the recreation and socializing area of the project. New urban plaza was extended until this L shaped bulding. And on the other side of the plaza, a small plane grove on a gridal form was design. With this green park, we aimed to continue the habits of the Urla people: resting under a plane tree. The scale and the mass organization of the project is in harmony with existing buildings and texture, on the other hand it corresponds new expactations of new age.