Milimetrik Architects Turns Istanbul's Rami Library Into Festival Ground

AileFest 2026 drew approximately 825,000 visitors to Istanbul's historic Rami Library over eleven days, making it one of the most heavily attended temporary installations the civic site has hosted. The festival, staged from September 26th to October 6th, 2026, spread across 91,000 sqm and was designed by Turkish practice Milimetrik Architects.

The studio converted the library's historic courtyard and interior halls into a single interconnected landscape for family-oriented recreation, education, and cultural programming. It's a striking use for a heritage building: instead of a quiet reading room, the complex became a playable terrain for children and parents alike. Photography by Fevzi Ondu documents the result.

How does the intervention treat play?

Milimetrik Architects built the project around what they describe as a child-centric, semi-structured spatial syntax, with ergonomic scales calibrated for different age groups. Rather than prescribing rigid play equipment, the studio populated the outdoor courtyard with:

• modular geometric volumes,
• abstract shelters,
• chromatic gathering nodes.

These elements allow open-ended circulation and spontaneous use, letting children define their own routes rather than following a fixed program.

What happens inside the library?

The interior Book Fair takes the most deliberate departure from convention. Standard orthogonal booth layouts gave way to pitched, house-shaped pavilions, primary-toned modular display stands, and graphic floor patterns. The geometry reads as a small village of book stalls rather than a trade-fair grid.

The design also stitches inside and outside together. Continuous circulation links the open-air courtyards with the historic interior galleries, so visitors move fluidly between the two without a hard threshold.

A heritage site, untouched

Every structure is a temporary timber-and-steel fabrication. That material choice is the project's quiet constraint and its central argument: the intervention activates the civic site without altering its heritage fabric. Once the eleven days end, the library returns to itself — no permanent scars, no reconstruction required.

What does this change for adaptive reuse in Istanbul? It demonstrates that a protected landmark can absorb a near-million-visitor event through reversible, off-the-shelf construction, a model other historic civic buildings in the city could plausibly copy.

Project information

• Name: AileFest 2026 (@aile.festivali)
• Architect: Milimetrik Architects (@milimetrikarchitects)
• Location: Rami Library, Istanbul, Türkiye
• Dates: September 26th – October 6th, 2026
• Festival area: 91,000 sqm
• Photographer: Fevzi Ondu (@fevziondu)