The building was built in 1870 as the winter mansion of Agop Köçeyan, one of the leading figures of the Istanbul Catholic Armenian community of the time. Opening to ‘Istiklal’, the most famous street of Istanbul, the passage has an important place in the memories of citizens.
We were invited to work on the lighting design for the entrance, circulation areas, and the special staircase hall leading to the cinema museum. With the excitement of taking part in the restoration project of the Atlas Cinema and Passage, we decided to produce a simple, inviting, and elegant lighting design. One of the important issues for us was to touch that historical building physically and philosophically as little as possible. We aimed to design lighting that would not steal the role of the building and even support its architectural design. For this, we analyzed the building and its surrounding environment, thus we tried to hear what the building wanted from us.
The passage takes people from Istiklal street, which is always very crowded and helps them reach 4 different places; Cinema hall, Museum of Turkish Cinema, a closed market and finally the street on the other side of the building.
The lighting design was designed in a linear concept, as like the architectural plan of the passage, to emphasize this circulation line. We positioned a track system in a detail that we discovered in the original state of the building. The spotlights mounted to this track system create illumination on the floor, while the indirect hidden light shows the specially restored vaulted ceiling.
Thus, this linear axis extending from Istiklal Street to the other parts of the passage; was emphasized with simple and pleasant lighting merged with the building architecture.
