While some airport lounges try to assuage their stomach-turning design schemes with free danishes and multi-lingual magazines, Turkish Airlines knows that there are few things more sumptuous than feeling as if you’re in a private pod, and jetsetters at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport were not to be denied such a luxury. More after the jump.

Determined to import the “contemporary Turkey experience” into the existing steel and glass shell of Istanbul’s airport, the designers at Autoban created a network of spheres and global forms with round openings on four sides linking the spaces with a series of arcades.

The spaces inside the lounge create varying atmospheres for their respective functions. A light and airy tea garden is furnished with indoor plants and interspersed with smaller pod-like structures that evoke garden pergolas. A dimly lit resting room is enclosed in a padded spherical room and furnished with rows of leather recliners. Meanwhile, the library area is stocked with monographs and a billiards table, and sensual white walls outlined in shiny black form a tasteful environment in which passengers can pass the time.

Though contemporary in its approach to comfort and innovative in its arrangement of open space and enclosure, the design deserves praise for its ability to evoke the floating domes and ethereal spaces of Istanbul’s Byzantine basilicas, exemplified in the fourth century Hagia Sophia. The lounge manages to defy the typical airport’s geographically neutral architecture and ground the space in the culturally rich surroundings of its place.

[All photos courtesy Bülent Özgören, via KNSTRCT]

by Kelly Chan

posted in New Projects

tagged airport, Airport Lounge, Byzantine Architecture, Byzantium, design, hagia sophia, interior, interior design, interiors, lounge, Pod, sphere, turkey

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