The Red Room by NUN Architecture & People Places Ideas
Global Design Forum İstanbul, Placemaking Installation
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Bridging past and present, The Red Room opens a dialogue between the church’s enduring stone fabric and Istanbul's more recent residential identity.
The Red Room is part of the Forum’s Placemaking programme of public installations and sits within the curatorial framework titled Praise of Transience by Melek Zeynep Bulut.
Under Bulut’s artistic direction, designers and architects have been invited to reconsider the ancient relationship between the human body and architecture through the notions of transience and permanence. Together, the installations consider the structure not as an object resistant to time, but as an organism that works with time and accompanies the body.
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Hagia Irene, located within the grounds of Topkapı Palace, is one of the few surviving examples of the atrium church typology in the world. The Red Room designed by NUN Architecture and People Places Ideas, sits at the heart of this atrium, treating the Forum venue as an installation in its own right.
Standing since the 7th century, Hagia Irene’s atrium has long served as an open-air threshold, enclosed by monumental walls yet exposed to the sky. The installation gently transforms this void into a temporary, intimate environment. Formed from layers of delicate red tulle, the structure creates a light-filled room within the colonnaded courtyard, evoking the softness and fragility of a dreamlike interior. The installation’s monochromatic red palette draws on İstanbul’s architectural heritage, referencing the warm red ochre tones found in traditional yalıs and historic timber houses.
This contemporary intervention bridges past and present, opening a dialogue between the church’s enduring stone fabric and the city’s more recent residential identity.
As daylight filters through the translucent material, it washes the space, and its visitors, in deep red tones, altering perception and atmosphere. The glow extends beyond the installation itself, subtly announcing its presence at the entrance and guiding visitors inward. The Red Room transforms Hagia Irene from a monument to be observed into a living, sensory forum where light, colour and history converge in a temporary yet powerful act of placemaking.
“By enveloping the audience within this semi-transparent red box, the installation transcends beyond a passive backdrop, instead it actively shapes the acoustic, visual and social atmosphere of the debates. In doing so, it initiates a contemporary conversation between the city's civic memory of Ochre Red and the monumental Roman-Byzantine masonry texture.” – Celâleddin Çelik
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Specially designed for Global Design Forum Istanbul by Celâleddin Çelik & NUN Architecture in collaboration with People Places Ideas, Kızılcık is an architectural response to the dynamic and functional needs of the Forum. The chair merges the "ready-made" aesthetic with a modern production language, centred around simplicity, lightness and the use of local materials.
Kızılcık is constructed entirely through interlocking joinery. This approach highlights the honesty of the material and the precision of the cut, resulting in a design that is both simple in its assembly and sharp in its silhouette.
“ The design of the chair draws its strength from local resources and Istanbul’s visual identity. The native wood used for the frame is finished in Ochre Red - the most symbolic hue of Istanbul’s civil architectural heritage. This choice of colour anchors the chair’s modern form to the city’s historical texture, making it both a functional tool and a visual statement. ” – Celâleddin Çelik
Following the Forum, the chairs will be donated to several institutions across Istanbul.
