‘The Grid’: Transforming the OIZ into an eco-industrial park

Can the relationship between organized industrial zone developments in the periphery of cities and agricultural areas within the same context be redefined in a sustainable framework? Can the industry-agriculture relationship be built in a way that complements each other without having to choose one over the other? Is it possible to create an industrial landscape on the same agricultural pattern while maintaining high-tech productive production of agricultural lands? Can a spatial model be put forward that would enable industrial development without alienating rural communities living in the urban peripheries?

The project addresses the issue of organizing the development of industrial zones located at the periphery of cities in harmony with the neighboring agricultural areas and rural settlements as one of the major planning problems to be tackled by design. In this context, the idea of ‘grid’, which functions as a common spatial arrangement tool in the planned production of the organized industrial zones in Turkey, is revisited with a different perspective. The same structural typology is re-functionalized in a generative, flexible, and adaptable manner instead of the standard structuring order that conditions the production of a fragmented spatial order within the enclosed block layouts.

The grid has the function of reorganizing the sectoral production pattern within the existing industrial area in a way to produce new industrial clusters while integrating the industrial park with the surrounding rural settlements, development centers, and the university. In this framework, a typology of spatial structure is reproduced that suggests a level of porosity to involve the agricultural fields in the new industrial development on the periphery.

Dilan Özdemir | Ecem Engin