ARKOBJECT: A Collectible Design Gallery in Istanbul’s Maçka

In Istanbul, new design often begins at a workshop bench rather than a drawing board. ARKOBJECT, a collectible design gallery in Istanbul’s Maçka district founded by designer Sami Savatli of SAVATLI Architects, is built around that exchange, bringing designers, artists and local artisans into view of the international collectible design scene. Furniture, lighting and mirrors share the floor with sculpture and wall art, and the interior’s harder task is making a side table and a wall relief earn equal attention.

Why This Collectible Design Gallery in Istanbul Treats Chairs Like Sculpture

ARKOBJECT’s stated premise is that an object can carry a presence beyond its intended use, and the interior is set up to test it. The shell stays quiet: white and warm-gray walls, a gray ceiling with flush downlights, and one continuous pale floor that never changes between rooms. That restraint gives a lacquered pedestal and a hand-worked relief the same neutral ground.

Works are grouped as mixed vignettes (small, composed arrangements of objects) rather than sorted by category, so a cabinet, stools, a lamp and wall art share one wall at roughly domestic scale. Height then does the curating. Plinths (display bases) lift sculpture toward eye level, a low platform raises select furniture into the register of art, and everyday pieces stay on the floor, where they still read as usable.

Design Decision: The roughest pieces get the slickest room. Hand-built ceramics, cracked and glaze-pooled, sit on stepped plinths against floor-to-ceiling brushed-metal panels instead of warm plaster or timber. The machine-made sheen exaggerates every thumbprint and glaze run, so the handmade reads as deliberate, not rustic.

Five Settings, Five Material Moods Inside ARKOBJECT

A Long Gray Room Lit Through a Perforated Grid

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

The main room runs long and narrow, pale on one side and warm gray on the other, closed at the far end by a perforated metal screen whose tight square grid softens the window light. Pieces line the walls to keep the center clear: a flower-backed metal chair, a clay vessel on a white plinth, a brass-toned spiral table and a rippled mirror disc that throws light across the gray.

One White Wall That Argues the Whole Thesis

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

This wall works as the gallery’s thesis in miniature. A black two-door cabinet with a pale carved medallion as its pull, a floor lamp built from stacked geometric segments, a fibrous wall relief and three stools in black, verdigris green and bronze finishes sit close enough to read as a lived-in room, yet far enough apart that each silhouette stays distinct.

A Monochrome Bay Cast With Faces and Figures

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

Here the palette narrows to black on white and the furniture turns figurative. A side table cut from two flat face profiles, a pair of chairs with mask-like backs and two dark sculptures on stepped plinths read almost as a cast of characters, with three gold-toned wall dishes as the only warmth. Raking light from one side doubles every silhouette in shadow.

Red Lacquer, Liquid Metal and a Chair Raised to Art

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

A polished metal chair with a heart-shaped back and its matching side table, likely Savatli’s LOVE collection, sit together on a low white platform as sculpture. Two glossy red faceted pedestals with brass-toned bands stay on the floor nearby, and a scattered cluster of mirror-polished wall pieces carries the chair’s molten surface up the wall.

A Ceramics Room Built Like a Low Skyline

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

Vertical panel seams set a steady rhythm behind the work, and stepped plinths rise and fall like a low skyline, holding vessels at three different heights. A dark, textured chair with scrolled, horn-like uprights and an upholstered seat anchors the left side, its pitted surface answering the glazes across the room.

Smaller Works in Glass, Glaze and Mirror

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

Beyond the staged settings, the selection runs down to tabletop and wall scale with the same material range. A deep red glass form with curling tendrils rests on a dark, leaf-sprouting base; a column of stacked white ceramic loops carries violet floral decoration; and a mirror composition sets gold-tinted and clear panels into an abstract, figure-like pattern.

Where the Staging Sharpens the Work, and Where Space Runs Short

Quiet rooms, loud materials
Neutral walls, one continuous floor and shifting plinth heights let polished metal, raw clay and fibrous relief register as material, not décor. Mixing furniture with art in domestic-scale vignettes lets collectors judge a cabinet or chair as something to live with.

Tight corners, bright surfaces
The narrow main room leaves little space to step back from its largest wall reliefs, which need distance to read whole. The mirror-polished pieces that bounce light through each bay also show every fingerprint, steady upkeep in a gallery that invites close inspection.

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Photo: Sinan Çırak

What ARKOBJECT Gets Right About Showing Craft

ARKOBJECT’s contribution is a disciplined way of staging rather than a new room type: a restrained shell, deliberate shifts in height and mixed vignettes that let Istanbul’s workshop knowledge speak clearly to the international collectible design scene. It suits collectors and interior designers who buy pieces to live with, not to store. The gallery proves that craft needs no rustic backdrop to look handmade.

FAQs

Where is the ARKOBJECT gallery in Istanbul?

ARKOBJECT is in Maçka, Istanbul, Türkiye. It is a curatorial gallery dedicated to contemporary collectible design and art, with particular attention to designers and artists working in Istanbul and to their relationships with local artisans and specialist workshops.

Who founded ARKOBJECT?

Istanbul-based designer Sami Savatli founded the gallery. His practice spans architecture, interiors, furniture and collectible design, and he established SAVATLI Architects in 2010. LOVE, his sculptural chair and side table collection, is part of the gallery’s selection.

Which designers and artists does ARKOBJECT show?

The selection includes Zeynep Fadıllıoğlu, Tayfun Mumcu, Betül Özkan, Marāu, Ayşe Demir, Sevgi Karay, Emel Güneş, Mesut Öztürk, Işıl Kapu, Maral Taşkırıcı, Dilek Fidan, Begüm Alkan, Sami Savatli and Animate Objects, among others, mixing established names with emerging voices.

What is ARKOBJECT Editions?

ARKOBJECT Editions is the gallery’s program of exclusive, limited-edition works. Designers, artists and local artisans collaborate from the earliest stage of an idea, developing form, material, scale and production methods together while drawing on Istanbul’s material knowledge and workshop culture.