YERDEN YÜKSEK
2023 | PUBLIC INSTALLATION | İZMİR
How can one redefine open parking lots as valuable public space for the city, when it has no public functionality for pedestrians?
In COLLABORATION with
UNDP & Karşıyaka Municipality
COORDINATORS
Tuba Doğu & Melis Varkal
PROJECT TEAM
Gülşah Eker, Özlem Şenyol, Tomur Canatan, Onur Güneş
Today's cities have reached a stage where deciding between vehicles and pedestrians has become a pressing issue. While vehicles are unable to find proper parking spaces in the city, thus occupying pedestrian areas; public spaces for pedestrians are experiencing a gradual decline. Located in Bostanlı, one of the most important districts of Izmir, Yerden Yüksek (translated as Higher Ground) is a prototype that aims to address this tension between pedestrians and vehicles with a tactical urbanism approach. Located in an actively used municipal open parking lot adjacent to a green area, the project poses the following question: How can one redefine open parking lots as valuable public space for the city, when it has no public functionality for pedestrians? Departing from this question, Yerden Yüksek aims to propose an alternative public space for the urban citizen by elevating the ‘urban space’ used as open parking lots to a higher level. The project, which can be defined as an effort to create a ‘permeable urban floor’ in an increasingly impermeable built environment, also aims to bring neighborhood residents together through a public space that accommodates both vehicles and pedestrians.
Implemented with the understanding of 'tactical urbanism', which stands for making spatial improvements in public spaces with fast, low-cost, and effective interventions, the project offers a cover that provides shading for vehicles on the ground level, while turning into a flexible spatial platform on the upper level, encouraging its use through the different activities it defines. The public space realized on the upper level is designed as an open platform that provides multiple benefits to the existing urban fabric while providing users with the opportunity of a space in which they could collect, collaborate, and create. In this sense, with its flexible use and modular structure open to growth and various uses, Yerden Yüksek offers an alternative public space model that can be adapted, modified, or tailored to open public spaces of different qualities within the city. Although Yerden Yüksek is a pilot project, it is designed to be able to expand and contract in different locations to the extent at which the location allows, while also transforming to accommodate different public activities.
Yerden Yüksek also contributes to supporting strategies aimed at increasing urban resilience to climate change. Through the use of vegetation on the upper level platform, the project has the potential to influence the microclimate and create a cooling effect by reducing warming in its surroundings, albeit at a micro scale. Yerden Yüksek, which can be defined as a public space intervention to create inclusive, resilient and sustainable cities, was realized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with the financial support of the Japanese Government, in collaboration with the Karşıyaka Municipality and UrbanTank. Through tactical urbanism, which is mostly associated with temporary interventions, an urban strategy proposal is aimed to be developed that can quickly be manufactured and transformed into permanent interventions using modular design and flexible materials.
