location: Istanbul
year: 2016
“Humans have always been radically reshaped by the designs they produce and the world of design keeps expanding. We live in a time when everything is designed, from our carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outer space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. Design has become the world and it is what makes the human. It is the basis of social life, from the very first artefacts to the exponential expansion of human capability. But design also engineers inequalities and new forms of neglect. More people than ever in history are forcibly displaced by war, lawlessness, poverty, and climate at the same time that the human genome and the weather are being actively redesigned. We can no longer reassure ourselves with the idea of ‘good design.’ Design needs to be redesigned.”
With the aim of underlining the importance of design for production, economy, cultural interaction and quality of life, the Istanbul Design Biennial is open to all disciplines of the creative industries in major fields such as urban design, architecture, interior, industrial, graphic, new media and fashion design, as well as their subfields. The biennial aims to explore the products, creative ideas and discourses of the relevant fields and generate interactive relations within the society.
Turkey’s growing role as an economic, political and cultural center has highlighted the importance of innovation and design and encouraged the development of creative industries, particularly in the multicultural metropolis of Istanbul. One of the biennial’s primary objectives, therefore, is to celebrate this creative potential and share it with the international audience in the belief that diverse perspectives and the distinctive design discourse of Istanbul will enrich the global design culture.
The Istanbul Design Biennial primarily aims to raise public awareness with regards to “design” issues, to create a platform that supports the development of design and innovation policies and to support the constitution of a design archive on national and international scale. The biennial exhibitions aim to tackle global design problems by displaying various solutions and reveal the creative potential inherent in this area. By displaying important examples both from Turkey and abroad, the Istanbul Design Biennial aims to discuss the notion of design and introduce different tendencies, movements and progressive thoughts to the audience. The biennial does not only intend to be an event that brings together a variety of activities lasting for two months, but also seeks to ensure long-term developments in social and cultural fields and to create an ongoing process with its yearlong activities.
