Kayseri Urbanic City Hall
Oruç Türk
The project area is located in Kayseri, Kocasinan, Gevher Nesibe Neighborhood. The exact location of the project is in between a fully commercialized, partially pedestrianized, and vehicle-occupied, and a large piece of fully pedestrianized area which is Mimar Sinan Park. The main approach to the project site was to create a safe pedestrian flow from every aspect of the building, therefore, it has required to generate a pedestrian island in addition to Mİmar Sinan Park that includes the City Hall the main significance buffer zone in the center of the flow.
The concept of the building derives from the combination of the words ‘organic’ and ‘urban’. Kayseri Urbanic City Hall aims to gain the full support and control of multi-type stakeholders in order to discuss, collaborate and arrive at a base that could work as a solution, and consequently, can be legalized through a legislative process. However, the main stakeholders that would have the important say in that matter are the communities who has experienced wrongfully altered public and individual properties, in addition, public areas who rapidly turned into unplanned high-scaled urbanization, urban context fitted into the historical areas, integration of the public transportation, increasing the walkability rate, etc. The concept is bred from maintaining an ‘organic’, or living-organism-shaped, urban re-development through the eyes of the diverse stakeholders in the purpose of fully emerging urban context into the needs and wants of the communities.
The building is divided into three main usages: privatized, semi-publicized, and fully publicized spaces. The privatized spaces include administration, legislative, and co-working offices, semi-publicized spaces obtain a library with an archive, a seminar hall with an exhibition hall, multi-functional co-working spaces, and council chambers. Finally, a workshop and a gathering area with a public kitchen and a cafe constitutes the fully publicized areas of the building.
