Kocaeli Fair Park by Özer\Ürger Architecture

Led by architects Ahmet Mucip Ürger and Ali Özer, Özer\Ürger Architecture is known for award-winning architectural and public-space projects that focus on the relationship between the built environment and people, and aim to strengthen individual participation in urban life. With Kocaeli Fair Park, the practice introduces an integrated public-space approach that reinforces continuity among the city, waterfront, and natural landscape.

Located at the eastern end of the İzmit Gulf, the project area brings together the former Fairground, which holds an important place in the city’s collective memory, and the ecologically valuable İzmit Wetland within the same coastal system. In this way, the project aims not only to reorganize the existing fairground, but also to establish a new public continuity extending from the city center along the waterfront toward the natural environment.

The project is based on the realization of the urban park envisioned for this area in the Kocaeli master plan previously prepared by Özer\Ürger Architecture. While a conservation and ecological restoration approach is adopted for the İzmit Wetland, which will constitute the second phase of the approximately 1-million-square-meter development, the completed Fair Park is conceived as a threshold between the urban fabric and the natural landscape of the wetland.

This threshold also forms the project’s primary spatial concept: a transition from the built and designed environment toward a natural and progressively wilder landscape. Beginning in the city center, the public realm moves through the controlled landscape of Kocaeli Fair Park, reaching the waterfront and eventually the natural ecosystem of the wetland. Rather than functioning as an independent recreational area contained within its own boundaries, the park thus becomes part of a broader system connecting the city with natural life.

The artificial lake at the center of Fair Park, one of the defining elements of the site’s identity, ecological diversity, and public use, has been preserved and renewed. The spatial organization of the design is shaped around the lake for this reason. The relationship with the lake and its waterfront is reinforced through a continuous walking route around the water and piers designed as extensions of the city’s existing pedestrian axes. Rather than simply providing access to the lake, the piers are conceived as public extensions that allow urban movement to continue into the park and toward the water.

With the removal of the structures around the lake, the continuity of the public realm along the waterfront has been strengthened. The new structures required by the program are positioned to the north of the park, between the park and the D100 Highway. This building zone creates a physical and functional buffer between the heavy transportation infrastructure and the park, while the openings and passages between the structures maintain the city’s connection with the park.

The landscape character of the park gradually transforms toward the sea, as it approaches the İzmit Wetland, located approximately a five-minute walk from the city center. The controlled landscape of the urban park gradually takes on a more natural and semi-wild character toward the waterfront, integrating with the wetland ecosystem. Led by architects Ahmet Mucip Ürger and Ali Özer, Özer\Ürger Architecture approaches this transition as a public space strategy that strengthens continuity between the city, waterfront, and natural environment.