Design Biennial announces concept

ISTANBUL

Bülent Eczacıbaşı

The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), will be held from Sept. 2 until Nov. 4, 2018.

The biennial’s curator, Jan Boelen, announced the concept as “A School of Schools” and open call at a press meeting held on Oct. 12 at Salon İKSV.

The press meeting was attended by İKSV Chairman Bülent Eczacıbaşı, Istanbul Design Biennial Director Deniz Ova and Boelen, the curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, as well as members of the press, academics, and design and architecture professionals.

“The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, which will take place in 2018, will ask crucial, globally relevant questions about design, explore new models of production and exhibition, and approach both design practices and the biennial itself with a new perspective. I hope that this biennial will be a source of inspiration for both the public and creative professionals and contribute significantly to our intellectual and cultural life,” Eczacıbaşı said.

A conversation about the concept, “A School of Schools,” between Ova and Boelen followed the press meeting.

Covering the challenges faced by design education in today’s changing world, the conversation turned to the role of a design biennial and how it can be used as an experimental space for alternative approaches to design education. Both reflected on how the next edition of the Istanbul Design Biennial can build on the previous editions to create a sustainable legacy for the initiative.

The biennial will seek to consolidate the legacies of previous editions, and reinvent the biennial format into a productive process-orientated platform for researching, experimenting and learning.

“A School of Schools” will manifest as a multi-platform biennial that uses, tests, and revises a variety of educational strategies to reflect on the role of design, knowledge, and global connectedness in contemporary Istanbul and beyond. The biennial will stretch both the space and time of the traditional design event, manifesting as a flexible year-long program within which to respond to global acceleration, generating alternative methodologies, outputs and forms of design and education.

Initiating an open call, “A School of Schools” invites a broad range of designers and thinkers from around the world to explore eight themes: Measures and Maps, Time and Attention, Mediterranean and Migration, Disasters and Earthquakes, Food and Customs, Patterns and Rhythm, Currency and Capital, and Parts and Pockets. Focusing on the process as much as the outcomes, the biennial aims to create new knowledge, search for alternatives to implemented systems, and with radical diversity, push the boundaries of the design discipline.

The open call is extended to all designers, architects, scientists, engineers, chefs, craftspeople, activists and everyone else, who would either like to propose or participate in a school or learning experiment. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 15.

For the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, Boelen is teaming up with Vera Sacchetti as associate curator and Nadine Botha as assistant curator.