Photography by İbrahim Özbunar & 645 Studio
AMBER HOUR
PROJECTS
Istinye sits above the Bosphorus, and the light there does something particular in the late afternoon, turning everything the colour of old brass. MS Istinye House, by the Istanbul practice escapefromsofa, was built to hold onto that light rather than compete with it, a home that reads less as a display of taste than as a place to disappear into at the end of the day.
The material language is set from the entrance: white oak run in long, quiet grain across walls and ceilings, warmed further by dark stained timber floors underfoot. A sculptural staircase curls down through the centre of the plan in a single continuous plaster form, its handrail cast without a single hard edge, spiralling past dark oak treads toward a bronze topped table below. It is the kind of piece that could sit in a gallery, except here it simply gets you from one floor to the next.
Concealment runs through the house as a deliberate device rather than an afterthought. In the sitting room, a full height oak panel slides back to reveal a bar fitted entirely in aged brass, its interior lit so that bottles and glassware catch the light like objects in a vitrine, then closes again to disappear seamlessly back into the wall.
The same instinct for discretion shapes the bedroom, where a sliding oak door opens onto a private study lined in a lattice screen reminiscent of shoji joinery, giving the room a second, quieter space to retreat into without ever leaving home.
Materiality stays warm and mineral throughout. In the dressing area, a burr wood vanity with soft rounded edges sits beneath a fluted oak wardrobe, a boucle stool pulled up to it in the same honeyed tone, while a sculptural brass form rests on the surface like a folded piece of fabric caught mid movement.
In the bathroom, a vanity carved from a richly veined breccia marble, its palette running from rose to charcoal, is fitted with brass tapware that picks up the metal used throughout the rest of the house, tying the wet rooms back into the same material story as the living spaces.
The largest gesture is reserved for the dining and living room, where a run of timber framed sliding screens opens the full width of the room to the city beyond, softened by a lattice pattern that filters the view rather than exposing it outright. Olive velvet sofas, a walnut dining table and a low set of dark stone side tables anchor the room in tone rather than contrast, keeping the eye on texture and grain rather than on any single statement piece.
MS Istinye House resists the instinct many high rise apartments have toward openness for its own sake. Instead, through timber, brass and stone repeated in quiet variation, it builds a home that folds inward, layer by layer, until the city outside becomes something glimpsed rather than lived alongside.
