Siraselviler is an old neighborhood in Istanbul, that has recently burgeoned as an entertainment district with contemporary restaurants, bars and boutique hotels. Changa’s menu is created by famed chef Peter Gordon of The Sugar Club in London.

The project is a renovation and transformation of a 1903 Art Nouveau building into a contemporary restaurant with four floors of dining and bar seating handling a total of 60 seats; 2,200 square foot back of house facilities with open kitchen, cold and dry storage, and food preparation areas and a 2,200 square foot administrative office and apartment.

The new restaurant, which has received much critical acclaim for its design and food, retains the original architectural features such as the wrought iron-gate at the entrance, sash windows on the front of the building, the floor tiles and the ornate moldings, which decorate the ceilings. However, the insertion of contemporary interventions, gives the building a new function. The primary alteration is the addition of an annex in the form of a container that has been placed on top of the back of the original building creating three extra floors of dining, with a private, self-contained office and apartment on top. A spiral staircase, seamlessly slotted into the core of the space creates a central access point to all areas of the building.

The appendage doubles the size of the restaurant and a skylight in the roof brings natural light inside. The extension surprises guests who on entering the narrow building unexpectedly find the restaurant stretches its entire depth and rises dramatically. Structurally and spatially, the upper levels of the restaurant work as two stacks of rooms on either side of the central axis, which is formed by the staircase. The rooms are divided into those that are back facing and those that are front facing with views of the street. Guests enter the restaurant through the bar that runs half the length of the ground floor. At the far end is the restaurant. Giant windows in the form of skylights inserted into the floor provide diners the opportunity to observe the chefs preparing food in the kitchen below. The chefs are also visible from the floors above. The kitchen area was created by digging out an extra level below ground in order to allow for the potential of more dining space above. To disguise the back of the adjacent building, an artwork by Canan Tolon, of images of architectural interiors screen-printed onto vinyl, covers the rear floor to ceiling glass panels of the annex.