Prismatic Weave is a production-based educational campus that reinterprets the legacy of the Village Institutes within the urban fabric of Sahabiye, Kayseri. Located beside the neighborhood pazar, the project responds to the site’s long-standing identity as a place of exchange by transforming it into a contemporary center for learning, making, and public engagement. Rather than functioning as an isolated school, it becomes an active extension of the city where education and community continuously intersect.
The educational focus on textiles, color, and digital fabrication draws inspiration from Anatolia’s rich textile heritage while addressing the future of material innovation. Students learn traditional weaving, sewing, pattern making, and experimental dye techniques alongside digital fabrication technologies such as laser cutting, CNC machining, and computational textile design. This combination preserves local craftsmanship while introducing new methods of production relevant to contemporary creative industries.
The building form emerges through the fragmentation of a single triangular mass into interconnected volumes. This strategy responds to the site’s pedestrian movement, surrounding roads, and the need for public permeability while creating a sequence of public spaces between the buildings. These spaces include a neighborhood Pazar, an Exhibition Gallery showcasing the textile-making process, and a Color Experience Pavilion, where tinted glass transforms natural light into an immersive exploration of color and material.
A secondary public building functions as the project’s immersive cultural component. Visitors first experience an exhibition that reveals the complete journey of textile production, from raw materials to finished fabric. Beneath it, the Chromatic Chamber transforms this process into a sensory environment where steam rising from heated dye pools becomes a medium for light projections, suspended textiles, and sound. Together, the school and its public program create a continuous cycle of learning, production, exhibition, and cultural exchange, reinforcing Sahabiye as both a place of heritage and a catalyst for future creative industries.
