Until this year, Istanbul Design Week used to take place in the old Galata Bridge in Balat. However this year, the city itself -especially the European side- became the exhibition venue for the event. This was especially a really good opportunity to visit the local design firms in their own environment. Seeing what they did with their own space or how they approached the visitors gave a really good impression about who they are. The main problems posed by this act of spreading into the city were the insane amount of time that was required to see all the events, and way-finding, for especially people coming from a different city like us. It is a rare thing to find two parallel streets in some parts of Istanbul due to its hills and really old city planning. Maps were provided for each event zone within the event brochures but these were very abstract, graphic representations rather than functioning as a guide. People at Lunapark told us on the first day of the event that they were seriously considering to place some additional signage on the streets to give better directions to the visitors as they had already received many complaints about this.
Our adventurous tour in Zone 1 which covered the Taksim, Beyoglu and Galata area brought us to the doorsteps of Ilio, whose showroom space was definitely one of the highlights of the event. Finding out later that their exhibition won the first place in the display and installation competition was no surprise at all. Being also the winner of several Red Dot and If awards, Ilio is the home product brand of the Istanbul-based design firm Demirden Design. Their designs in the exhibition were mostly concentrated on tabletop and furniture. You can check out the photos from the exhibition right here.
The student participation in the event was a lot less, compared to previous years. Instead of checking out the same orientalist designs that we have been seeing for years now, it would have been really exciting to see more works by design students whose works afford to be more daring and experimental compared to works coming out of the industry. Marmara University and Mimar Sinan University from Istanbul, and Anadolu University from Eskisehir were the only three universities that displayed their works in the exhibition at Addresistanbul. The architecture faculty of Istanbul Technical University hosted the exhibition of the results of the IMMIB Industrial Design Competition at the beautiful Taskisla building, giving a chance to see some more student work from other universities. The majority of the participants of the “Mediterranean Design between Present and Future” competition were also students. The results got exhibited at the Mozaik showroom. Judging from the participant profile of the competition, the results could have gotten much more interesting and richer in content had the organizers made a more wide-spread announcement within Turkey and all of the other Mediterranean countries. Although this exhibition at Mozaik was announced to be one of the major happenings during IDW 2009, the way the projects were displayed graphically had a lot of room for improvement. Check out the entries and photos from the exhibition here.
Unfortunately, this large room for improvement point was valid for many of the exhibitions part of IDW 2009. Maybe curators and organizers did not have high enough expectations in terms of visitor traffic. It was disappointing to see that even the exhibitions which were going to stay open for four days did not have their signage and information graphics up in the afternoon of the third day. These situations make one wonder whether these exhibitions were organized just for the openings with happy hours for snobbish designers. However, this ’invitation only’ approach doesn’t do much for reaching out to the public and democratizing design.
The ‘Detour Moleskine’ exhibition at Santral Istanbul was definitely one of the highlights of the IDW 2009 event. 50 international artists’ Moleskin notebooks were on display, allowing visitors to go through their sketches, drafts, drawings, and notes in person. Istanbul was the fifth stop of this traveling exhibition after London, New York, Paris and Berlin. In addition to the notebooks of the international artists, an accompanying exhibition called as ‘myDetour’ showcased selected notebooks of students from Istanbul Bilgi University, Domus Academy and the winners of myDetour Berlin. For photos of the winning and participating entries of the myDetour exhibition click here. For photos from both the Detour Moleskin and myDetour exhibitions check out here.
I was also extremely happy to visit Santral Istanbul for the first time thanks to these exhibitions. Before Istanbul Bilgi University opened Santral Istanbul in 2007 as a house for contemporary arts and cultural activities, the building served as the first city scaled power station of the Ottoman Empire. Built in Halic, which used to be the oldest industrial zone of the city, Silahtaraga Power Station was the provider of Istanbul’s electricity between 1911 and 1983. The station is well-conserved and won back to the city as a cultural entity that can revitalize its neighborhood.
Participants of the public street party which Sema Topaloglu organized on the third evening of IDW 2009 also had a good time and were impressed with how she well revitalized a very old building on one of the steepest hills of Istanbul and turned it into an office and residence for herself.
Opening of the Design Library Istanbul was definitely good news for the city too. The library, which is the third branch after Milano and Shanghai, is located in Eski Sapka Fabrikasi in Haskoy. The location which used to serve as an old hat factory on the shore of Golden Horn will now be a really useful address for design lovers in Istanbul.
Check out the album for more photos from Istanbul Design Weekend 2009.
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