One question sits at the centre of Zeynep Didem Bardakcı’s work: why does a space leave a mark on us? She asks it at the scale of a sculpture, in the entrance hall of a hotel, and at the moment a project is being decided.
She began architecture at Istanbul Technical University. Her studies in Florence taught her to read architecture together with art and cultural context, and art history deepened that view. She later completed courses and certificate programmes in design and spatial thinking at institutions in the United States, including Stanford University.
Her practice began in façade design and production. With Axis & Line, the firm she founded, she worked on hotel developments and for prestige brands, gaining field experience through projects in the Middle East. Over time the firm became a boutique design practice that staged display windows as scenes rather than shelves.
The need to make site-specific objects and sculptures for those windows in-house led to a workshop. The workshop became Art & More Gallery in Akaretler, Istanbul, which opened in November 2022 with the exhibition Zeyn’s Cells. Because it presents only her own works and designs, it now carries the name Zeynep Didem Bardakcı Studio.
In 2026 she turned this cross-disciplinary experience into a method of analysis and founded In Between. In Between does not design spaces; as an independent outside eye for hotels, retreats and restaurants, it studies how a space is actually lived. Its principle: minimal intervention, high impact.
Architecture, sculpture and consulting are, for this reason, not separate jobs but three scales of the same question.
For works, see Zeynep Didem Bardakcı Studio; for consulting, In Between. Full details: CV.