Istanbul Corner Cafe Transforms Into Bar by Night
Dama occupies a corner in Istanbul, and the concept behind it is straightforward. Soto Lab and Arcus designed a single floor plan that shifts personalities three times throughout the day. During the morning, the space functions as a bakery-café serving coffee and breakfast. The afternoon brings a casual atmosphere for small bites and laptops. By night, the back of the room transforms into an intimate listening bar for drinks and records.
Most designers creating such a wide range of functions might build separate rooms to hide the differences. The teams at Soto Lab and Arcus chose to weave these moments together instead. “Rather than designing separate identities for these moments, we wanted Dama to transition between them while maintaining a continuous spatial language,” the studios stated in a joint design release.
The building’s two-sided corner plays a major role. Daylight floods the front, while the rear remains in shadow. Rather than fixing this imbalance, the designers built around it, using the bright front as the daytime zone and leaving the dim rear to settle into an evening bar naturally. The same corner condition blurs the boundary between inside and out, which helps disguise a low ceiling.
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That ceiling relies on a timber grid pattern inspired by traditional Japanese joinery. Wickerwork panels fill the grid, adding warmth to what could have been a harsh interior. The design uses a restrained palette of stained plywood, burgundy ceramic, grey-blue walls, and green surfacing only where the hi-fi zone requires a lift. Flooring follows the mood, shifting from a concrete-look micro-topping up front to glossy burgundy ceramic as the room turns into bar territory.
Custom and vintage elements define the furniture, which includes lounge seating, stools, and a mid-century leather sofa. Murano wall lights provide older fixtures that add emotional weight to the room. At night, neon-green accents and light boxes built into the ceiling grid signal the shift to bar mode without splitting the hi-fi corner into a separate room.
The public has already adopted the low corner pavement out front as an unofficial extension of the seating area. The designers observed these natural movements to ensure the space accommodates how people actually use the building.
