POSTANE
İç Mekan ve Aydınlatma Tasarımı · Galata, İstanbul · 2021. Lighting for the whole of Postane, the restored Old British Post Office in Galata, and the interiors of its two fair-trade shops, designed from what the building revealed during restoration. Interior & Lighting, Galata, Istanbul. TUNK: İstanbul mimarlık, sergi tasarımı ve enstalasyon ofisi.
Postane is a place for social, environmental and urban initiatives and shared cultural production. Involved from the restoration stage, the studio could study the building as it was opened up, floors lifted and walls stripped back, and the elements that surfaced became the brief: the volta ceiling, the wall niches, the sun motif above the entrance, the gridded window frames. For the shop and café on the ground floor, which offer goods from cooperatives and social enterprises, each piece was designed and made together with its craftsmen. The light falling through the gridded windows is lifted off the floor into a produce counter that also carries the café; above it, a gallery light follows and breaks up the window grid, its colour changing with the use of the floor above. A publications display is built from frames that bend towards the viewer, with adjustable holders for each title. The bookcase takes the rhythm and slope of the iron beams of the vaulted ceiling and turns 10° to meet the wall. At the second entrance, a new light hangs through the double-height space as a counterpart to the sun motif above the door, its parabolic curves shaped by hand. The making was documented from the first day, so the project is told through workshops and installation as much as through the finished rooms.
- Year
- 2021
- Location
- Galata, Istanbul
- Type
- Interior & Lighting
- Category
- Architecture
- Status
- Completed
- Scope
- Furniture, Lighting
- Press
- Arkitera
- Award
- Türkiye Mimarlık Yıllığı 2021 (Turkey Architecture Yearbook), selected project
- Photography
- Emirkan Corut
