Organizer: Industrial Designers Society (ETMK)
Panel: 2 December 2012, 14:00-16:00
İstanbul Modern

Istanbul Design Biennial Seminar Program continues with a panel titled “Industrial Design in the Triangle of Art, Craft and Innovation” organized by Industrial Designers Society (ETMK).
Today, roles of industrial designers are changing. Industrial design was perceived as a more technical discipline in the profession’s history; however, just as in the rest of the world, today’s industrial designers are more preferred in Turkey as well – for the projects which have a marketing-based view and a conceptual, innovative and futuristic claim. As industrial designers begin to create different fields for themselves under these unstable market conditions, the profession’s limits are expanding. The panel organized by Industrial Designers Society (ETMK) at the biennial examines the intersection of industrial design with art, craft and innovation; their overlaps and differences, as well as looking for the answers of these questions: How should industrial design gain a place in the network of invention, technology and engineering? How are these relations positioned in the world? How should designers position themselves against craft and art, while participating in projects that combine craft and art, and trying to make room for themselves in different fields by designing and producing their own products? Is a craftsman a designer as well, or can a designer be a craftsman, or does he/she have to be? How and to what extent can craft affect design? How close is an industrial designer to these concepts? In which situations does design coincide with art? Can design be “art” and designer “artist” as well? Where should we Turkish designers stand in this triangle, considering the expanding limits? How should Turkish designers be trained, so that they contribute to Turkish economy, find a place in the market and get employed? Should we have a predominant point in this triangle?

Moderator: Ferda Kolatan (University of Pennsylvania, PA)
Participants: Graham Harman (American University, Cairo), Jason Payne (UCLA, CA), Rhett Russo (NJIT, NJ), David Ruy (Pratt Institute, NY)
23 November 2012, 16.00-18.30
Venue: Istanbul Modern

Over the past two decades the “digital revolution” has transformed our cultural landscape on a global scale. Following a century of modernist agendas dominated by mechanization and globalization, the advent of computation held the promise of a different ethic, one that favors specificity, authenticity, and individual expression over modes of standardization and efficiency. However, today we see this promiseseverely compromised by an even more rapid trend to homogenize design expression into a disembodied universal brand. This often results in “spectacular” designs that are accessible only to a small group of design aficionados while leaving most others feeling uprooted and culturally alienated. This sense of loss is further aggravated by the still prevalent postmodernist emphasis on relationalism and language, which defines all things through their ties to other things and through translations rather than through a real, material identity. In opposition to this tendency a powerful alternative has been emerging in recent years in the work of a small group of thinkers and architects who look to define their work based on materiality, digital craft, and ambient effects. The panelists, who are leaders in their respective fields of philosophy and speculative architecture, will show their work and discuss the potentialities of this new paradigm, as it refers to our current cultural situation.

On November 17, Saturday a large group of speakers came together to reflect the production process of the İzmir/Sea project at Istanbul Modern as a part of the Seminar Program. A discussion was held in the form of an informal conversation on how the process of developing an egalitarian and democratic project is achieved and what this process can teach us.

The coastline surrounds the northern Gulf of Izmir, starts from Karşıyaka Mavişehir, continues until Bayraklı, Alsancak, Konak and ends in the South, İnciraltı. The Izmir Sea Project contains the protection of the identity and the reorganisation of the 40 km long coastline as a wide public space. However, the project has remarkable originalities not only due to its size but also due to the process mobilising more than 100 designers, academics and experts to achieve the project. This project, which can be considered the first attempt of its kind in the history of urbanisation in Turkey, is egalitarian rather than hierarchical, contains multiple voices rather than a single voice and aims to create an environment not only for the city but one which will participate in the lives of the urbanites. Different from the top-down projects, most of which are developed for a limited segment of society, this project is an informative experience of how urban scale projects should be developed in such a way that it will be open to debate and broad participation.

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Organized by: Wallonie Brussels Architecture (WBA)
Discussion Forum: 15-16 November 2012, 14:00-18:00
Istanbul Modern

These moments of exchange highlight the WBA’ project, (Un)City – (Un)Real State of the (Un)Known, on display at Istanbul Modern as a part of the Musibet Exhibition. These discussions organized and moderated by the architects Djamel Klouche, Cédric Libert and Sinan Logie focus on city’s transformation processes, on confronting various ideas and approaches to contemporary metropolitan issues. With the idea of approaching the urban matter through diverging, if not opposite, strategies (top-down vs bottom-up), the floor is given to a series of personalities who recently participated in the public debate, in Brussels or Istanbul, and each in their own way came up with a project for the city.

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