Barcelona studio Lagranja Design were called upon to develop the second “The Populist” restaurant, located in Bebek, an elegant district of Istanbul. Meanwhile, just a few months after opening, the first “The Populist”, in the Bomonti district, has been acclaimed by several newspapers as the best place to eat in Istanbul.
The challenge, which began two years ago with the first restaurant, was to transform Turkey’s first historic beer company into a modern, industrial-style brewery, inspired by the graphic language of the prohibitionist period. The new restaurant had some particular spatial characteristics, which required some original ideas and innovative solutions. The new “The Populist” is located in a former villa with a garden in a prestigious area overlooking the Bosporus Strait. For the lighting, Lagranja Design collaborated with lighting designer Michela Mezzavilla’s studio, reMM.
The lighting had to meet various requirements: it had to be small in size with a minimalist aesthetic, while offering very specific technical performance and the option to have interchangeable optics with different light beam widths, accessories and finishes. We contributed to the lighting design with the Yori Track and Yori Pendant projectors, which delivered the flexibility required, thanks to the large number of accessories and finishes available.
Yori Pendants, in the special brushed copper version with Dim-to-Warm COB (Kelvin temperature from 2000K to 3000K), were used for precision illumination of the restaurant’s tables, creating different ambience depending on the time of day and the brewery service. And Yori Track provides precision and general lighting in various areas of the space, used with and without barn-doors and with light beams of different widths.
The aim was to provide controlled illumination only where necessary, and to ensure maximum visual comfort: for this reason, perfectly calibrated light beams and glare-reducing accessories were chosen. All products work with DALI drivers, to create different lighting scenarios at different times of the day. The result is lighting which is perfectly integrated into the architecture, showcasing the important elements of the space, and leaving them to take centre stage.