Life Inside the Shell: Emotion and Belonging in Interior Architecture

Özge Kadayıfcı Architecture draws the line that separates inside from outside; interior architecture begins within that line, the moment we step through the door. Here, too, the first question we ask ourselves is the same: what kind of life will be lived in this space?

The first encounter with a space lasts a few seconds. In those few seconds, something inside us either stirs or it doesn't. What really interests us is whether that stirring turns into belonging over time.

A door on the plan

In architectural drawings, we show a door as a quarter arc: a small curve describing the area the leaf sweeps as it opens. The form in the emblem of the Chamber of Interior Architects of Türkiye reminds us of this line too: a room with its door ajar.

This curve is perhaps the simplest definition of the profession: a threshold, a movement and an interior not yet seen beyond it. The moment the door opens, the interior speaks its first sentence to the person entering. Interior architecture is thinking about what that sentence will say.

Defining the profession: what does interior architecture cover?

The Chamber of Interior Architects of Türkiye's professional supervision regulation defines interior architecture services quite broadly, from research and consultancy to measured surveys, from design and project work to the supervision and coordination of construction. It describes the field of the profession as "comfort conditions, safety and functions in enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces connected to the interior".

We agree with all of this definition. We just add one more word: belonging.

Seeing, understanding, feeling

You can measure comfort and calculate safety, but belonging has no unit. Nor does it happen by itself. We first see, then make sense of what we see, and only then does feeling follow. We often can't say why we feel at ease somewhere; the direction the light comes from, the warmth of a material, the height of the ceiling relative to our body say it for us.

A space is not the sum of its parts. When we hear light, material, colour and texture together, the space becomes a song, because we don't hear the notes one by one; we hear the song.

Juhani Pallasmaa says architecture is experienced not only with the eyes but with the whole body. We look one step further: what stays with us when we listen to that song without noticing it? We believe this feeling, gathering below the threshold of consciousness, is one of the real reasons we remember a space and want to return. Perhaps this is what belonging is: feeling you are in the right place without knowing why.

Goethe described architecture as frozen music. We want that music to be played anew once life begins inside. This quiet melody is what we try to build in interior architecture, which is why we design light, material, colour and texture together, not as separate decisions but as parts of the same melody.

Method instead of style

In more than thirty years, we have never had a single signature style. Yet every now and then, a former client walks into another venue in the same city and says, "you designed this place". When we ask how they could tell, the answer is rarely a form or a material; they mention the way the light is used, or the feeling it awakened in them.

We look for the reason in the way we work. When making design decisions, we focus less on material, colour or construction technique and more on the feeling the space will leave. There are many moments at the start of a drawing when we ask each other, "what did you feel?" This happens most in restaurant projects: in a space that isn't finished yet, we imagine ourselves in the guest's chair and look for the answer there.

We share this not as an achievement but as an observation we reflect on: perhaps what stays with people in a space is not what they see, but what they feel.

Part of this way of thinking is not separating the space, the business and the brand, which is why we develop the logo, menu and graphic language within the same team. We also design the decisions that don't show in a photograph of a space: where the eye goes first on entering, where people pause, and where they head next.

Analysis: interior architecture begins with reading the shell and the people

Interior design often begins inside an existing building. Our first job is to measure: we produce a measured survey of the existing space, because you can't build a right design on a wrong measurement. Then we read the shell: where the structure is, where the services run, where daylight falls in the afternoon.

In our article on architectural design we described how we read a site. In interior architecture, the existing building takes the place of the site, but the way of reading is the same. A well-read constraint can often become a project's best idea.

Then we listen to the people who will live inside that shell: a family or someone living alone in a home, a guest who changes every night in a hotel. In a commercial project, the business itself counts as a user too.

Concept: the sentence everything refers back to

At the end of the analysis we have a great deal of information. The concept is the moment we distil it into a single idea, which is why we make every subsequent decision on colour, material and light by looking back at that idea.

In 2012, when renovating the public areas of Taksim Square Hotel, we didn't touch the building's structure. For a hotel standing at the start of İstiklal Avenue, right in the middle of the city's cultural memory, we found the concept in Ottoman palace architecture: symmetry became the backbone of the space, and mirrors and chandeliers multiplied it.

At Provia Hotel, in Heiligenhaus, the question was entirely different: how do you create a personal stay instead of a standard hotel room? The answer came down to a single feeling, the warmth of home, and we designed every detail so guests would feel at home.

In short: two hotels, two concepts that look nothing alike. Their analyses were different, and so was the feeling they wanted to leave.

Design: interior architecture where the hand touches

In the design phase, the concept turns into colour, texture, material and light. In interior architecture this transformation happens very close to people: on a surface the hand touches, in a detail at eye level. As we wrote in our article on lighting — when we design light, we design shadow too.

We don't think it is only the comfort of the chair that makes a dinner last longer. We believe that when the taste of the food and the rhythm of the space meet in the same melody, people can stay longer at that table. The rhythm the space conveys, the music of the whole and, of course, the music actually playing may all play a part. The feeling left from that evening can make the space memorable and make people feel they belong there. We think belonging often forms like this, without being noticed.

Invisible care

A calm feeling often rests on many right decisions that can't be seen.

Sound is first among them. At Dorock XL, in Beşiktaş, for example, the stage, bar and social areas shared the same volume, and acoustics were one of the things we had to consider from the very start; when a project requires it, we work with external consultants in specialist fields like this. Behind the surfaces, meanwhile, are ventilation, electrics, water and fire safety. As we explained in our article on technical infrastructure — even the most careful design can't fulfil its purpose when these systems aren't set up correctly. That is why we address escape routes and the fire rating of materials at the design stage.

We also plan accessibility from the start according to the needs of the project; BeyMen Restaurant in Dortmund is one example. We believe that feeling you belong somewhere starts with being able to get in comfortably. We also custom-design most of the furniture and lighting, because a space's own proportions often call for its own details.

We always share the design with our clients through a 3D presentation, together with photos of the materials to be used, and after approval we can prepare a material board or samples on request. Seeing a texture on screen is not the same as holding it in your hand.

Moving to site is the most fragile moment of the process: the feeling we built in the design can be lost through a single badly executed detail. At Aylin Y.B. House, in Burhaniye, we ran this process from start to finish as one team. After the architectural design and construction from the foundations up, we also took on the interiors, furniture, curtains, lighting and final styling. On the day we handed over the keys, the house was ready to live in.

A feeling tested by time

We don't think the measure of an interior is whether it is "beautiful" or "good"; these depend on to whom and by what standard. For us, the real question is whether the space serves the purpose it was built for. By purpose we mean not only function, but the life meant to be lived there and the feeling it is meant to leave. The answer emerges not on opening day but over the years. Materials may age, but we believe a space built true to its purpose does not lose its identity with use; on the contrary, it gains meaning.

We have worked with OT and 6:45 since their very first venues, designing the chains' branches. We reinterpreted each branch for its neighbourhood, building and guests, yet whichever one you walk into, you can feel you are inside the same brand. Designing a Restaurant is the article where we called this keeping the brand's character while creating a space that belongs to its place. We think this is one of the signs that a design has achieved its purpose.

After thirty years

Since 1993, in more than 400 projects, we have always started from the same place: first, trying to understand. A villa in Burhaniye in 2010, a hotel in Taksim in 2012, a restaurant in Dortmund in 2023, another hotel in Germany in 2026. Scales, cities and functions changed; the question we ask did not.

We think people remember a space less for how it looks than for how they felt there. To build that quiet melody, the invisible has to be designed with at least as much care as the visible.

You can find the scope of our interior architecture service on our Interior Architecture Service page.