Oasis Neighborhood

Oasis Neighborhood is a student team proposal that rethinks how a fast-growing city edge can hold space for daily life rather than only traffic. Designed by Oznur Kilic, Ilkay Demirkent, Sedanur Uyar, and Busra Armutcu, the project sits along the Eskişehir road in Ankara, Turkey, one of the growing axes of the city. The team began by reading the missing aspects of the land, asking what a neighborhood there actually lacked.

The questions that shaped the idea came straight from the site. The density of the Eskişehir road, vehicle noise, weak pedestrian safety, the absence of public space and green space, the presence of structures that addressed only a certain class, and unplanned growth all pointed to a place without the functions that make a neighborhood feel like one. The designers aimed to construct a setting where people of all ages and social classes could meet, instead of a single-use corridor.

From a busy road to a sheltered oasis

To pull people away from the road, the team built a buffer zone, a strategy long used in urban design to separate pedestrians from heavy traffic. The slope of the land was used to carve a crevice at the lower elevations, a slit that lets visitors escape the noise and intensity of the route. This green buffer continues through the whole project area and resolves in an oasis, an escape point along a path that many people cross every day in transit.

Program is layered with the terrain. Shops sit on the lower level, while houses and shops are separated with the help of a base that gives each its own ground. Workshops were organized to grow the products produced in the Bostan, a traditional urban agriculture garden, and a market place was designed so residents could sell what they raise. This loop of growing, making, and selling is meant to keep people in contact with one another, which is the social core of any healthy neighbourhood.

By treating green space, slope, and shared work as connected tools, Oasis Neighborhood turns a noisy transit point into a place that belongs to the people who pass through it.