伊斯坦布尔咖啡馆 | Mitte | 2026 | 土耳其
In a rapidly expanding corner of Istanbul, a former wedding venue has been given a different social life. Local People, a new Istanbul café and gathering space in Başakşehir, a large residential district on the city’s European side, occupies a 2,200-square-metre circular building with a glazed dome and a locally familiar silhouette from its earlier incarnation. Instead of fighting that unusual geometry, Istanbul-based design studio Mitte has made it the organising principle of the new interior, navigating the spatial complications of an uncompromising layout.
The brief was shaped in part by what Mitte identified as a lack of quality social spaces within the area. Local People was conceived as a response: somewhere between café, workplace and meeting ground, with a design intended to draw people in and give them reason to stay.
“The intent of this transformation was not to erase the spatial memory of the past, but to reinterpret it through a modern, refined and compelling design language,” says the design team. “The most powerful idea driving the design was the potential to create a truly singular space capable of standing apart through its own distinct identity.”
Mitte, an international design and creative studio based in Istanbul with offices in Germany and Austria, approached the project through its four partners: Azad Ataş, Büşra Cihan, Eser Bayar and Eda Bozkurt. Their first decision was also the most consequential. Rather than demolish the early-2000s structure, previously recognised for its caravanserai-style domed form, the team chose to preserve it – even though resolving a massive circular footprint proved to be their primary hurdle.
Rather than forcing a conventional hospitality grid into the building, Mitte allowed the layout to radiate from a central anchor. At the middle of the ground floor, a monumental willow tree installation rises through the café like an exaggerated trunk, around which a broad counter appears to orbit. “This organic focal point represents ideas of gathering, belonging, rootedness, and growth,” says Bayar. “The user experience unfolds around this centre; the space becomes a warm meeting ground that draws people into a shared atmosphere.”
Above, the mezzanine repeats the same motion, its curving white balustrade wrapping around the central void rather than cutting across it. Seating, service points and circulation continue the rhythm in concentric layers, extending through the main room to a perimeter loop and an outdoor round terrace.
The result is a choreographed openness. There are few hard spatial breaks, yet the building does not read as one enormous room. Long cream banquettes hug curved walls, bar-height seating settles into the mezzanine, and softer lounge furniture appears closer to the greenery outside. The circular plan keeps revealing different versions of the space as visitors move through it, turning potential architectural grandeur into something comfortably communal.
Nature provides one source of imagery. Coffee provides another. Rather than falling back on dark timber and industrial black, Local People builds its palette around a progression of warm browns, chalky creams, muted terracottas and softly reflective metal.
“The coffee tones used throughout the interior were chosen to translate the sensory qualities of coffee – its rich aroma, its depth and the way it gradually diffuses through a space – into a visual language,” explains Ataş. Reddish-brown metal cladding wraps structural columns and the base of the central counter, catching distorted reflections as daylight moves beneath the glazed roof. Pale upholstery and white surfaces soften the palette, while circular recesses filled with coffee beans punctuate sections of wall like material samples rather than branding. Even in smaller ancillary spaces, deeper rust and coffee tones take over completely.
- 转载自：AD(admiddleeast)
- 图片@AD(admiddleeast)
- 国家：美国
- 编辑：序赞网
- 翻译：序赞网
- 阅读原文
|
