With offices in Istanbul, Dusseldorf and Vienna, MITTE’s latest project is Local People — a hospitality space in Istanbul that brings together contemporary café culture, community and a calmer pace of everyday life. Defined by its domed structure and subtle artistic interventions, the project balances architectural precision with a warm, domestic atmosphere.

Local People emerged from the transformation of a long-standing domed building embedded within the city’s dense urban fabric. While adapting the structure to contemporary life, the design preserves both its original form and spatial memory, while strengthening its relationship with the surrounding park and valley. In an otherwise compact residential district, this landscape offers one of the area’s few open breathing spaces, allowing the project to function as a quiet pause within the city.

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Rather than operating solely as a café, Local People was conceived almost like an everyday living room — somewhere to unwind after work, spend time over coffee or comfortably settle in throughout the day.

A WILLOW INSTALLATION AT THE CENTRE 

The building’s traditional dome and almost perfectly circular plan form the backbone of the interior scheme. Respecting this strong central geometry, the layout unfolds radially from the core towards the perimeter.

At the centre stands a vertical willow tree installation that evokes the feeling of a nest. Acting as the conceptual anchor of the space, the organic structure creates a subtle sense of expansion throughout the interior. The vertical elements radiating outward are treated not simply as columns, but as part of the overall spatial language. Finished with gradient metal surfaces, they reference both the tonal richness of coffee culture and the fluidity of the design itself.

IN COLLABORATION WITH ARTIST PINAR CETIN 

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One of the building’s defining features is its glass dome, which draws daylight deep into the interior. To shape light as part of the spatial experience, Mitte collaborated closely with artist Pınar Cetin.

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At the entrance, an amorphous artwork with soft colour transitions wraps around the central column, transforming a structural element into a sculptural gesture that welcomes visitors on arrival. Developed as part of the same collaboration, textile shading panels beneath the dome soften the incoming daylight while extending the artistic language across the ceiling. Throughout the interior, white surfaces reflect this filtered light, gently softening the boundaries of the space.

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The relationship between indoors and outdoors is reinforced through material continuity. The willow branches forming the central “nest” extend into the exterior areas, replacing conventional umbrellas with more natural shading elements. As the seating layout moves away from the centre, it gradually becomes looser and more dispersed, creating flexible pockets throughout the space. The result is a calm, light-filled retreat that reinterprets a traditional form through contemporary materials and artistic interventions.