Located within a university campus, Babel Bookstore & Café (Babil Mekan) was designed as a place for socializing and studying shaped around books and coffee. For students, it became not only a bookstore but a meeting point: a place to study, exchange ideas, and spend time together.
At the center of the design stands the main structural column, highlighted by a wooden sculpture of a hand holding a book, crafted by sculptor Onur Çanka. This gesture transforms a structural element into both a symbolic and spatial focal point.
The interior layout creates the feeling of an inner courtyard framed by bookshelves. The long communal table at the center supports both individual and group work, while surrounding seating arrangements accommodate various forms of social interaction.
Warm wooden textures are balanced with industrial surfaces. The shelving system, lighting elements, and soft color transitions generate a stage-like atmosphere that accentuates the richness and diversity of the books.
Babil Mekan is conceived as a small-scale yet layered public space where architecture, craft, and everyday life meet.
“When I was very ill, when my fever approached forty, my hands would grow.
Enormous hands. It happened mostly in my childhood.
‘My hands are growing,’ I would say.
My grandmother or my mother would take them into their cool palms.
‘There is nothing, my child, nothing! Look, your hands are in mine,’ they would say.
I would calm down for a minute or two. But then my hands would grow again.
My hands would grow. How much they grew, oh my God!
When I stepped outside, the cold would shrink them back.
I was on the streets. One against thousands. One against tens of thousands.”
Sait Faik
