More than 200 multi-disciplinary practitioners from across the globe transformed Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district into a hive of activity. They had gathered for A School of Schools, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV). Curated by Jan Boelen with Vera Sacchetti and Nadine Botha, the festival encouraged a “productive uncertainty which triggered critical thinking and making” – says director Deniz Ova who shares with us the highlights and impact of the biennial on the design community.
The Biennial was called ‘A School of Schools’. How did you meet this vision over the course of the event?
Deniz Ova: The biennial is about design as learning and learning as design. You could also say that design is unlearning and unlearning is design… The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial centred on these types of questions such as how design education can be different, what can be learned from old and new, how tradition and technology can come together, how the ways to produce can vary within various networks, and how alternatives can be created with projects examining our ways of design and learning. The projects and events within the biennial delved into different perspectives and topics from maps to food, measurement units to time, craft to artificial intelligence, and painting to space stations, manifesting as an experimental method in itself and placing this questioning at its very core.
What were some of the highlights of the Biennial this year?
Ova: In Jan Boelen’s opinion, Halletmek by Nur Horsanalı can be considered as a metaphor for the whole biennial in the way that it sheds a light into intuitive approaches. Cansu Cürgen and Avşar Gürpınar’s Ambiguous Standards Institute was quite intriguing with the way it embraced ambiguity and used storytelling as a method, while Mae-ling Lokko’s collaboration with Nana Ofori-Atta Ayim, Selassie Atadikta, and Gustavo Crembil in Palaver + Palaver was certainly another highlight as it introduced a new space for living and discussion, by combining local rituals and cultural values with contemporary approaches to materials. Another project worth mentioning here as an example of bringing crafts and digital aesthetics together is Blooming Algae by Atelier Luma Algae Lab… recreations of domestic items with algae biopolymers.
What kind of lasting impact has the Biennial made in your opinion?
Ova: We learned from the biennial that extensive collaborations with different fields and entities, along with ongoing interactions, alternative experiments and the freedom of making mistakes are extremely important for the future of design and for the Istanbul Design Biennial to continue living beyond the exhibition by expanding its network. Instead of a comprehensive disciplinary curriculum, A School of Schools is project-based, unfinished and always under construction. I hope the biennial will inspire other people to question conventional methods in education, encourage new forms of learning.