Istanbul Design Biennial 2014: the second edition of Istanbul Design Biennial will open in Turkey tomorrow with a series of exhibitions, panel discussions and design tours of the city.
Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, the city-wide design festival takes place from 1 November to 14 December 2014 and is curated by British writer Zoë Ryan under a theme titled The Future Is Not What It Used To Be.
To launch the biennial, Ryan will host an informal talk today between 2pm and 4pm on the future of manifestos, with designers and industry experts, including British design academic Fiona Raby.
The centre of the festival will be at Galata Greek Primary School where five floors will be taken over by 53 projects that address and discuss the future of design.
Projects will be arranged into five categories – Personal, Norms and Standards, Resource, Civic Relations, and Broadcast – and will be set in an exhibition space designed by Istanbul-based studio Superpool and Project Projects from the US.
In addition to the exhibition, Galata Greek Primary School will host a series of design events including seminars, film screenings and a special programme for children and young people.
A group of 33 universities from across Turkey will present The Academy Programme, which will feature a total of 72 projects as well as workshops, exhibitions and panels.
Curators of this year's festival have also organised five design walks around Istanbul that take in some of the city's leading studios, stores and manufacturers, starting daily at 11am from Çemberlitaş in Istanbul.
The second Istanbul Design Biennial is co-sponsored by Arçelik, Doğuş Group & Bilgili Holding, Enka Foundation and VitrA and is free for all to attend.
Here is more information from the organiser:
The second Istanbul Design Biennial The Future Is Not What It Used To Be organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and curated by Zoë Ryan opens to the public on 1 November. Throughout the city and in the biennial hub, Galata Greek Primary School, the biennial features 53 projects from designers all over the world that ask: "What is the future now?" as well as panels, conversations, workshops, film screenings and many other events until 14 December 2014.
By rethinking the manifesto as a platform to frame pertinent questions, the projects question the role of design, its relationship to society, and its ability to be an active agent for change. The second Istanbul Design Biennial is co-sponsored by Arçelik, Doğuş Group & Bilgili Holding, ENKA Foundation and VitrA and it is held free of charge.
The biennial was launched with a media conference held on Thursday 30 October at Galata Greek Primary School with the participation of İKSV General Manager Görgün Taner, Director of Istanbul Design Biennial Deniz Ova and curator Ryan.
Ryan says Istanbul has a thriving creative community, so it seems an especially appropriate city in which to reflect on the field of design. In an effort to contribute to an already rich dialogue in Turkey and focus on issues urgently affecting daily life, the biennial brings together diverse design ideas from across the world for an emerging set of conditions.
"The 2014 Istanbul Design Biennial is envisioned as a conversation starter, Ryan said. "It is an occasion to present a range of projects by some of the most inventive practitioners working today, and emphasise the critical role that design plays in identifying points of urgency and posing questions about the objects, buildings, and environments we interact with daily, as well as materialising outcomes."
The conference was followed by the exhibition tour guided by Ryan and associate curator Meredith Carruthers. After the tour, The second Istanbul Design Biennial Academy Programme Exhibitions and other events were visited at the biennial's event space, Antrepo 7.
The biennial hub at Galata Greek Primary School
The exhibition at the second Istanbul Design Biennial hub, Galata Greek Primary School continues over all five floors of the school, an area of approximately 2,300 square metres. The projects imagine new possibilities that can transform the present and invite new potential futures.
The biennial features 53 projects by more than 200 designers from more than 20 countries including Australia, China, France, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Turkey and the United States, that propose alternative manifestos in the form of objects, fashion accessories, food, menus, maps, buildings, visual languages, systems, and services.
An additional project, The Exhibition as Manifesto, is a survey of the history of design exhibitions through the lens of thirteen historic shows. Compiled by the curators in collaboration with researcher Maggie Taft, these seminal group and thematic exhibitions dating from 1956 to 2007 were selected for their continued relevance and resonance in the design field.
In addition to the exhibition, the biennial hub at the Galata Greek Primary School hosts different events for design enthusiasts daily for six weeks: the Kontraakt team's broadcast programming, which includes a weekly radio show, is held on Tuesdays and throughout the week, Q&A sessions and panels on Wednesdays, film screenings on Thursdays, and Children and Youth Programmes every day.
Events at the second Istanbul Design Biennial
The Istanbul Design Biennial event space Antrepo 7 hosts the biennial's Academy Programme as well as other exhibitions, seminars, conversations and workshops during six weeks. The biennial will spread over the city with its Design Walks, How To Do Too Kadıköy Project and film screenings. More information about the programme is available at tasarımbienali.iksv.org
The Academy Programme featuring 72 projects organised by over 33 academic institutions from Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Europe and the United States to reveal different aspects of the biennial theme, can be viewed at university campuses and at Antrepo 7, from 1 November to 14 December. Antrepo 7, located in Salıpazarı Harbour is open to the public for the first time as the second Istanbul Design Biennial Event space.
A digital platform has been created as a long term archive for the university projects participating in the Istanbul Design Biennial. Under the sponsorship of Polimeks Holding, the Academy Programme Platform also has an awards scheme for the projects that receive the highest amount of viewer traffic on the platform.
Within the scope of the Istanbul Design Biennial, the exhibition Polska In Between is organised in collaboration with Culture.pl, the flagship brand of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, in honour of 600 years of Polish-Turkish diplomatic relations. Polska in between is an extensive presentation of contemporary Polish design, including product, graphic design, design thinking, public space, food design, design for children, as well as conceptual work. The fruits of the diverse design workshops, lectures, exhibitions, artist residencies, panel discussions and projects will be shown at Antrepo 7.
More programmes and workshops will also be held by Arçelik, Türk Tuborg A.Ş. and VitrA in Antrepo 7. Design Walks, comprised of visits to design studios, stores, manufacturers, and noted buildings in six neighbourhoods and six thematic walks on Istanbul's Asian and European sides to examine the textures of the city and observe traditional crafts are organised throughout the biennial.
Building on themes of dialogue and exchange in the biennial, the Talk to Us Panels and Designers in Dialogue Conversations gather together curators, critics and designers to explore new potentials for the design manifesto in the 21st
Century and ask critical questions about our shared future, now. The panels and conversations are sponsored by VitrA and held free of charge.
The Film Programme held in Galata Greek Primary School and TAK Kadıköy throughout the biennial, presents different approaches to living in the future.
How To Do Too Kadıköy is a collaborative action initiated as part of the biennial. Building on the experience and expertise of both 72 Hour Urban Action (72 HUA) and Tasarım Atölyesi Kadıköy (TAK; Design Atelier Kadiköy), an open call to designers has resulted in the creation of five urban furniture for five meeting points of Istanbul's Kadıköy neighbourhood.
The furniture will be constructed with the residents by using recycling materials on Saturday, 1 November and Sunday, 2 November. The event will be held at 9am in TAK Kadıköy, at 12pm at Kadıköy pier, at 3pm at Kadıköy Altıyol Square on Saturday 1 November; and at 9am in Moda Çay Bahçesi (Moda Tea Garden) and 12pm in Moda shore on Sunday, 2 November.
The images and video recordings showing the prototypes and design process will be on display in the second Istanbul Design Biennial Exhibition in Galata Greek Primary School as of 11 November.