Design of urban furniture in recreation area: Investigation on picnic activity in Bayrakli

Today, the need of a labor force, which has been increasing with industrialization and the dream of having a better life, could count as one of the reasons of ongoing migration to cities. This situation leads to rapid urbanization. Adverse factors in the cities such as hectic working hours, social rules, an immobile and monotonous life, noise, and pollution rupture people from nature and natural environments. It could be said that various reasons cause the decrease in quality of life in the cities. Such as: the increase of population density, policies followed by local governments and the state cause unplanned and unbalanced urbanization, and the inadequacy of common facilities. Human emotions and behaviors are shaped by the culture, the personality, the organism, the social role and the physical environment. Physical environments that people are involved with contribute to the satisfaction of their needs and realization of themselves as individuals. For this reason, urban public spaces, which are called recreation areas, are important as open spaces where urban residents need to spend their leisure time due to population density and working hours brought about by modern life. Citizens are engaged in various recreational activities during the leisure time that is remaining from their work time. The planning of these areas and urban facilities that serve recreational activities are important factors in order to increase the diversity of its usage, and improve the quality of life in the cities. In recent years, local governments have been carrying out various studies to improve the quality of life in the cities. As a gulf city in Izmir, within the possibilities provided by the city's geographical conditions and climate, citizens spend most of their time around the bay to relax and socialize in their leisure time. Within this scope, Izmir Metropolitan Municipality has initiated Izmir Deniz (Sea) Project, as one of the strategies within the adaptation of the governance's vision, in order to increase the quality of city coastline, the quality of citizen's life and the relationship of the Izmir Gulf with its coastline. The coastline of the bay was divided into zones and designed by teams that include experts from different disciplines according to a participatory process. Emergent designs were prepared to be applied in stages by the local government considering the user needs of the area, the production processes, as well as laws and regulations. According to analyses that were committed in order to understand the current usage practices within the scope of Izmir Deniz (Sea) Project; Bayraklı, which is one of the zones and located at the border of the new city center, is separated from others because of some of its characteristics. The user profile of area residents features different socio-economic and educational backgrounds and shows a diversity of demographics compared to other regions. In the findings based on the existing usage practices of the area, it was determined that the area was used intensively for picnic purposes. Within the context of Izmir Deniz Project the area was designed, implemented and constructed as 'a picnic and recreation area' by considering the coastal usage practices of Bayraklı, which was noted as having the feature of being the new city center and by its bounding two sides of the gulf and the different points of the city. The aim of the current study is to examine the design process of urban furniture in urban recreation areas with regards picnic activity, to study the transformation of the ideas into design processes that are created through co-design by stakeholders, and then compare the resultant designs with the products adopted and applied within the scope of Izmir Deniz Project. The reason for the examination of this subject by focussing on the picnic is because of it being the most popular activity at the chosen study area, as well as its social dimension, comprising sub-actions that are defining the objects and their relationships within the environment, and therefore revealing, various needs and uses. Also, it is considered that picnics are performed frequently from a cultural perspective in Turkey. A picnic is an activity that usually takes place in open air and evokes images of socialization and relaxation that includes different activities such as eating, playing games, drinking, and walking in nature. It is possible to talk about the positive effects of this activity by exploring user habits, expectations and needs and to make use of this data for designing urban facilities during the design process of the recreation areas which are the places of picnic activity in the cities. In this context, it could be said that the design processes of urban furniture includes user-oriented, needs-conscious, human and environmental relations, environmental psychology and design methods. User focused design studies are frequently used in the designing and manufacturing processes of the products. In today's design processes, the cooperation of users and designers and the cooperation of experts from different disciplines saves time, creates appropriate solutions and creative designs with the influence of different perspectives. Also, it leads to positive effects during the processes of persuasion of local governments. In recent years, user-focused design research has evolved into participatory design processes. The reason of this is that, while user-oriented design processes collect data, by using techniques such as observation and interview, to use them in the process of design, during a participatory design process, users are transformed into active actors of the process and involved in 'designing' through interaction and partnership. One of the many research methods that are used at different stages is called co-design. Around the world, much of this type of research has been conducted and implemented with successful results. But, in Turkey, processes that are based on user experience are not very common yet. For this reason, the current study is aimed to contribute to the literature by using co-design approaches as a method. In the scope of the research literature review, observation, face-to-face semi-structured interview and co-design methods have been used. Firstly, a comprehensive literature search was conducted for the topic of the picnic. The reason for this is because, despite the fact that the picnic as a recreational activity has been commonly carried out, there has been no previous study made of it as such. Correspondingly, recreation areas, as picnic places, were approached through modernization and the subject of urban furniture was researched. Observations made on the field were photographed to present the material culture as visual data. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews with users were conducted from the perspectives of: the social dimension of the picnic, the spatial organization of the area, picnic objects and urban furniture. Obtained data, observations and resources were used to prepare the content of the co-design workshop. Designers, manufacturers, field users, representatives from local government and NGOs participated in the workshop. As a result of the work, the designed project area within the scope of Izmir Deniz (Sea) Project, the face-to-face semi-structured interviews those conducted in the research process, and the findings those are obtained in the co-design workshop were presented to the views of the local government. The findings were evaluated with regard to the urban furniture, the location of this furniture and picnic products and then analyzed comparatively within the existing literature. According to the results, the findings emerged that design ideas that are revealed by the implementation of the co-design method are more creative and diversified than those which were obtained and applied within the Izmir Deniz Project. On the other hand, it was also revealed that co-design process would have not been adopted by the local government because of its time extension and need of human power.