Türkiye İş Bankası

Repurposing the Branch, Reconnecting with City

Expertise

Branch Repurposing Strategy
Service Design
Customer Journey Design
Branch Concept Design
Dual-Purpose Spatial Design
Environmental Branding
Spatial Narrative

The challenge

For Türkiye İş Bankası, we designed and delivered a future-ready branch from the ground up, housed within a historic Istanbul ferry at Galataport, blending banking, culture and community within a resilient platform supporting everyday use and emergency response.

Developed for Türkiye İş Bankası in collaboration with Şehir Hatları, İş Vapur reimagines the branch as civic infrastructure woven into daily urban life. 

As one of Istanbul’s most iconic transport modes, the ferry is already embedded in the rhythm of the Bosphorus. Rather than repurposing an existing vessel, the project delivers a new, purpose-built ferry where banking integrates with culture, hospitality and community.

Permanently docked at Galataport, İş Vapur invites people to engage with the bank beyond transactions. Visitors can access services, browse books, enjoy coffee, attend events, or simply spend time in a space open to everyone, not only customers, creating a more accessible relationship between bank and city.Beyond experience, İş Vapur is designed as a resilient, dual-purpose branch. It can maintain essential banking services during disruption and support emergency response in times of disaster.

Positioned between everyday life and critical readiness, it defines a more adaptive future for physical banking.

The big idea

The ambition was to imagine a new kind of branch, one that deepens human connection, carries the weight of the bank’s cultural legacy, and stays meaningfully present in both the ordinary flow of life and moments of disruption.

A bank branch, reprogrammed.

Not as a place you visit, but as a piece of the city you step into, where banking dissolves into everyday rituals. And when the unexpected happens, it quietly shifts role, becoming infrastructure the city can rely on.

Banking as a Cultural and Social Environment

Building on the thinking behind İş Mekan, this project extends the idea of the bank as a spatial platform, one that adapts, hosts and connects. No longer defined by fixed functions or formal boundaries, it operates as an open system embedded in urban life. A place where financial services, culture and community coexist fluidly, responding to both daily rhythms and moments of need.

A New Model of Resilient Banking Space

Designed as a layered, experience-led environment, the branch brings together a café, a bookstore featuring İş Bankası Yayınları, and a flexible event space, where banking becomes part of a broader social and cultural setting, open even on weekends.

A spatial composition that balances everyday engagement with built-in resilience, allowing the space to shift roles and support the city when it matters most.

Adaptive Civic Infrastructure

Rooted in Istanbul’s layered urban fabric and Türkiye İş Bankası’s long-standing social role, the design extends beyond everyday use to embed resilience into the space itself.Conceived as a dual-purpose infrastructure, the branch can seamlessly transform into an emergency response hub in times of disaster, supporting essential needs while maintaining continuity, and reinforcing its role as a trusted civic anchor.