So there is not a whole lot out there in terms of analysis of the dynamic urban systems of Istanbul. These would be the manifestations of the nomadic economies of Asian and African origin in Anatolia and Eastern Europe. Specifically those last 19th century actors of a civilization that had been active for more then 2000 years. The Euro-Asiatic synthesis based on the micro to the macro movements of people in urban forms of habitation. From village to town to regional capital to Istanbul the fluid relations coursed threw a dynamic decentralized network adapted from the fluid movement sytems of the steppe and the desert. The performance of this culture, this ethos, in and by the Anatolian peasantry represented a uniqe synthesis that had its most vociferous exposition in Constantinople/İstanbul. Of course there is the important work of Stefanos Yerasimos on urbanism in Istanbul. His analysis of the transformation of the meydan concpet from the Ottoman period into the 19th century. Maybe you can throw in Zeynep Çelik’s streetwise analysis of a block in Sultanahmet.
Or perhaps one can accept the fact that most persuasive creative statement analyzing 19th century İstanbul comes from artists who lived at the time, the work of the photographers Sébah & Joaillier. From their offices on 493 Grande Rue de Pera they honed a surgical if not fantastic eye on 19th century İstanbul. Their capturing the systems of the nomadic economy, the various peddlers, hawkers, deliveryman, religious figures and mendicants provide the first and last glimpse to an ancient world that would quickly then disappear.
Sébah & Joaillier
Photograph by Sébah & Joaillier, "Professor and his students"
March 8th, 2009
Ross Lovegove, Cetacea, 1822 x 705 x 635mm, copper, photography courtesy of Galerıst by Bariş Özçetin
Ross Lovegrove exhibition Primordial shown at Galerist in January/February 2009 features some of the designers signature work produced over the past few years. Utilizing handicraft combined with high technology materials such as aluminum and carbon fiber the designer continues to pursue his interest in abstract geometric forms. Showcased in this exhibition are a number of pulsating and undulating works produced by hand in the shape of benches, tables, chair and a prototype for a motorcycle. Throughout the exhibition Lovegrove’s mastery of form is evident in the almost supernatural character of these limited edition design objects that could easily also be seen as sculpture.
Lovegrove’s career in design has seen him go through a remarkable development where today he is becoming more known for the creativity of his forms rather then the end products. His disciplined fascination with organic forms and craft over a career that now spans over twenty years has reached a nadir where one feels that the whole point of what exactly these objects are is beyond the point. Exhibited as they are in an art gallery such as Galerist, the works of the the Primordial exhibit are at the edge of contemporary ideas of form and shape at their most abstract.
Lovegrove’s career in design has seen him rise to beyond the design world to a position as one of the more innovative minds in form. Ross Lovegrove was born in Wales in 1958. After having studied industrial design at the Manchester Polytechnic, in 1980 he entered the Royal College of Art of London. After graduation, he worked with leading industrial design company Frogdesign in Germany, participating in the design of the Walkman for Sony and computers for Apple. In Paris he worked in the design team of the furniture manufacturer Knoll International, designing the Alessandri office system, a work which brought him attention in global design circles. Also in France, he was part of the Atelier de Nimes with Philippe Starck and Jean Nouvel, and worked as a consultant for leading brands such as Cacharel, Luis Vuitton, Dupont and Hermès. In the second half of the 1980s Lovegrove returned to London and by 1990, he had opened his own Studio X in Notting Hill. Since setting off on his own he has worked for international clients, developing a style inspired by the forms of nature combined with a thorough knowledge of ergonomics and advances in technology and production. Armed with these experiences he arrived in Turkey 2004 starting to work with the ceramic and bath fixtures for Vitra. Since his first Istanbul series for Vitra in 2006, Lovegrove has been one of the few international designers and architects with a constant presence in Istanbul.
With Primordial, the Istanbul public has a chance to see first-hand a different approach to design that is part of the current worldwide trend where art and design have almost become the same thing. As Lovegrove himself declares, “I’m an evolutionary biologist, more than a designer. I don’t know what design is anymore, I create form, I understand form and I’m enjoying the digital age to create it.” Entering the gallery, one is confronted immediately by one of these art/design hybirids, the amorphous copper Cetacea piece which is the one “art” work in the exhibition. Cetacea is an elongated tube like structure perforated by lateral openings whose complexity can only be understood upon close inspection. Does one sit on this? Is it sculpture? The relation between observer and object is at once immediate and powerful because of the form and material but is ultimately an indefinite and tense one because what does not exactly what do with this object. Are we supposed to observe and appreciate it, sit on it, can we touch it?
Moving through the gallery to the other “design” objects, two benches, two sets of tables and a bike form, the functional aspects of each of these pieces starts to become to mind in relation to their striking forms . Expertly lit in the gallery installation to produce reflections of their dynamic shapes, the objects are complemented by video projections, digital prints and the dramatic lighting. Expanding beyond their immediate shapes, these objects explode out into the gallery. It is here in the experience of form itself that one sees the power of the object. It would be absurd to think of using any of these objects on a daily basis. If they have any function at all it as indications of new direction in man’s quest to create physical versions of contemporary culture.
In Primordial, as the title of the exhibition emphasize, Lovegrove is trying to get at the basics of form and shape through innovative materials and techniques. His evolving design practice has led him to this point where he is almost a god-like form creator producing modern day monoliths to this age’s ideas on technology, material and shape. Undoubtedly, for the Istanbul public more used to seeing Lovegrove through his Vitra bathroom furnishings, a designer working in this way will seem odd. These objects are all well and good but the question many will ask is…why? Why a table that will never have anything on it? (Which in fact would probably not look good with something on it.) Why a bench whose materials would be too precious to sit on?
The works in Primordial, all limited edition handcrafted masterpieces, are important not for any other reason beyond the fact that they are powerful objects. Their value as creative originates from the fact that they give back to the object an importance that has been lost in our contemporary consumer culture where material objects in the form of products are quickly bought, consumed and discarded. Works such as Lovegroves reinvest objects with a degree of power they once had before they were mass produced and made anonymous and superfluous. In this exhibition the fascination with the shapes and forms stems partly from the detailed handcraft that was undoubtedly required to produce them. The power of the human hand to create and the human mind to innovate has been actively involved in the conception of these objects that look back deep into the past as much as they point dynamically forward into the future.
February 10th, 2009
“Integrated systems: When everything is connected to everything else, for better or worse, everything matters.” Bruce Mau
It is clear from the events of the past year that we are in a critical period of world history. The global financial and economic crisis, the monumental dangers posed by worldwide ecological change and continued wars across the Middle East and Asia, are at the top of the list of serious problems that have shaken the foundations of the global system. The crisis itself has in fact started many people to rethink the values behind the current market based capitalism that seems to be at the root of these problems. As we assess the first wave of globalism that has occurred over the past 20 years, it seems a revision is necessary in the system itself. The time has come to imagine how to live, learn, work, and play together as a global community in a broader way then was possible before.
This line of thought and action requires us to think of what we can do in our own local place that can contribute something unique to the global community. What do I have that I can give to the globe that can add to a new formulation? How is my local applicable to the global? What are the productive and progressive values of my situation that can make be meaningful on the world stage? The next task then becomes one of action. In order for these ideas to filter into a new system, ultimately this optimistic somewhat utopic way of thinking then has to be translated into a new culture, a new global community.
It is here that we the meaning behind Istanbul culture is something to be thought about. Living and working in Istanbul we often take for granted the cultural and creative formulation existent in the city. While thousands come to Istanbul looking for the past, it is ironic the residents of the city live in an uneasy relationship to its present. Contemporary life in Istanbul, its culture, its literature, art and design, exists in a unresolved relation between past and present. For Istanbul to contribute to the global community the contemporary in Istanbul, the meaning of contemporary culture in Istanbul needs to be identified.
Istanbul has been a center of ideas for thousands of years. The often stated “bridge between cultures” role of the city has despite some over use still holds true today. Istanbul’s culture represents a unique synthesis of many things. From its foundations in ancient Greece to the following Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and contemporary Turkish civilizations, Istanbul is a repository of ideas and qualities that are important historically and for their relevance to a wider cultural perspective.
When thinking of the relevance of Istanbul to the wider world it is to its quality as a place of sharing and diversity. For many years this sense of communities and cultures sharing a common space is a force that motivated the city as place of inclusion and cultural synthesis. The culture of Istanbul in fact can be said to be not a single “authentic culture” but rather an amalgam of cultural forces constantly on the move. Similar to the famous winds that stream over the city from all directions, Istanbul culture is a place of dynamic forces in constant dialogue. It is never just one thing but a collection of things on the move. This dynamism is a central aspect of contemporary culture in Istanbul today. As the noted American writer and poet James Baldwin, a resident of Istanbul throughout the 1960’s commented about the city, “It is both in Europe and in Asia, which means it is neither Christian nor Muslim, neither white nor black.” Not being one idea but a place of interaction between ideas for many years it is important today to focus on how these dynamics can be developed.
In speaking of contemporary Istanbul culture at the start of the 21st century there are many ideas emerging from its past that can be explored today as a contribution to the global community. This place of interaction, the place of exchange and resolution, the place where differing cultures can co-exist, these dynamic aspects of the urban identity of Istanbul that are coded even into it’s name. The word Istanbul originating from the Greek “is tin polis” means “to the city” itself denotes the sense of dynamic action We do not have time in this short essay to completely detail the qualities of Istanbul culture that contribute to a new global community and ecology, but ideas such as cultural entropy, mobile culture, informal cultures, archeology and the past in the contemporary, bricolage culture, spirituality and consciousness in everyday life are all concepts that exist in contempoary Istanbul in a meaningful way. These concepts form the basis of a dialogue that is continued at many levels and cross-sections of society. These are part of a broader framework of the basic foundations of Istanbul culture that can be explored through the interaction of major global figures with Istanbul.
The task at hand for contemporary culture in Istanbul is to at this most important time in our globe figure out what we have to that can contribute to the global community, to establish a meaningful dialogue with the global community that is about ideas and concepts that we have, to value our concepts and bring them to the world stage. For many years, almost 300 to be exact, we have been concerned with importing culture, gaining validity by bringing in the latest and greatest from the largely the West. It seems now the time to change and move things in the opposite direction. What can contemporary Istanbul give to the world that is unique….
February 10th, 2009
This is a short review of the Miniatürk theme park that I wrote for ID Magazine back in January of 2005. This is my original text that was later shortened by the editors at ID. I thought it was still relevant so I republish it here. The miniature city model park dates back to the early 1950s in Holland with the most famous being the 1:25 scale Madurodam.
General view of Miniatürk, Sütlüce, İstanbul
“It used to be that Americans would go to Epcot Center in Orlando, The Disney Corporation’s theme park for all things worldly to get a quick taste of global culture. Eliminating the muss and fuss of international travel, Epcot’s various country pavilions, modeled in a quirky 90% of normal scale would give visitors a peak at a bite size cliché version of each country’s cuisine, products and architecture. All this complete with real live nationals in traditional gear providing smiley-faced service. Much to the consternation of high-minded critics like Jean Baudrillard who grandly proclaimed the modern theme park as the end of the real as we know it, the theme park and theme park style architecture have been a dominant force in urban life for over two decades. Anyone who’s recently had a chance to visit New York City’s 42nd Street or the lofty cutting-edge-architecture-as-attraction collection of buildings of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz can attest to that.
The thematization of our cities has reached a point where individual cities and even countries have themed themselves to gain the bounty of tourism dollars. One of the newest of these is the resourcefully named Miniaturk in Istanbul, Turkey. Run by the Municipality of Greater Istanbul, Miniaturk is just that, a theme park containing miniaturized versions of Turkey’s and the former Ottoman Empire’s most famous historical sites in over 100, 1/25 scale models.
Located in the upper Golden Horn, a dusty length of waterway in the industrial center of this frenzied city, Miniaturk’s architectural models arranged in neat pathways around a larger scale version of the city’s Bosphorus Bridge allow sightseers to quickly scan over 2000 years of architecture in about an hour. For visitors to Turkey with not enough time to inspect the country’s superior but far-flung examples of Greek , Roman, Byzantine, Near Eastern and Ottoman architecture, Miniaturk provides a brief glimpse into what you are missing without actually having to miss it. As with the real thing, the great domed mosques of the Ottoman master architect Sinan and the Byzantine Church of Hagia Sophia stand out in a mix of buildings that deteriorates in the modern period into scale model examples of a gas station, a shopping mall and that consummate monument of modern culture, a model of a stretch of modern highway! So successful has Miniaturk been in selling architecture as entertainment that a second example, Minicity, designed by the innovative Turkish architect Emre Arolat has already been built in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya, and is set to open later this year.”
Model of Hidiv Kasrı (House of the Khedive of Egypt), Miniatürk, Istanbul
Model of Hagia Sophia, Miniatürk, Istanbul
Model of Süleymaniye Mosque, Miniatürk, Istanbul
Model train, Miniatürk, Istanbul
May 27th, 2008
This collection of outdoor furniture by Aziz Sarıyer for Park actually came out last year. Sorry it’s taken me some time to get to it.
I have to say first of all that in my opinion this is the best piece of design that came out in Istanbul and Turkey in 2007. Sarıyer has in his design work over the past decade gone past the point where style is even an issue. He’s in another zone where it’s about form creation at its most basic, in an epistemological register where archetype meets abstraction in a way that is only possible in the unique geography of Turkey. My treatment of these qualities of geometric abstraction in design in Turkey and by Turkish designers are described at length in my book, Turkish Touch in Design published by Nurus. (If you want to buy the book, contact Nurus).
In this case, Sarıyer is allowed to cogitate on some basic issues in abstract geometry as the client is his daughter. Park is an Istanbul based furniture company run by Sarıyer’s daughter by Dilruba Sarıyer and Mehmet Yucebaşoğlu in 2007. We see Aziz Sarıyer’s signature geometric approach to design at it’s best. Monolithic, geometric, low, objective, abstract yet with a slight residue of symbolism, these are the qualities of design in Turkey that have existed for centuries that Sarıyer so deftly translates into contemporary form ın these polyethelene furniture pieces.
Table, chair, lighting, seating group. PARK. Design by Aziz Sariyer, 2008
May 19th, 2008
Poster, Design Cities, Tasarım Şehirler, İstanbul Modern
Design in Turkey does not seem to have a long or meaningful history. When it is mentioned most people are surprised that contemporary design from Turkey even existed at all. Didn’t Turkish designers just copy from the West? Wasn’t Turkish design just a second rate or third rate version of what was going in Milan, London etc? What of interest could possibly have been created in Turkey of the 1930s or 1950s, 1960s….?
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May 19th, 2008
During the latest Salone del Mobile in Milano, Nurus unveiled Hexa, a new lightweight executive desk, at their stand in the Zona Tortona by the Istanbul based industrial designer Can Yalman. This was the first collaboration between Nurus, Turkey’s premier office furniture company and Yalman, a leading figure in the burgeoning Istanbul design scene.
The Hexa desk was produced by Nurus in the form of a hexagonal double carbon fiber structure. The simple straightforward shape belies a more complex geometry inspired apparently by nanostructure. Inspiration and metaphor aside I like the rawness of the rib skeleton which looks organic and technological at the same time. The whole ensemble might be a bit to stylized for some tastes but I think Yalman is onto something here with this insect exoskeleton meets surfboard design.
Yalman’s recent work has matured greatly especially his mastery of abstract geometry. His fascination with the geometry of nature had been evident for a number of years and could be seen in much of the work he produced for Kale Seramik. With the Hexa desk he seems to have started developing his own taste for geometric abstraction which we hope will lead to further more successful investigations in this important area for design in Turkey.
back view, Hexa executive desk by Nurus designed by Can Yalman, 2008, computer render
front view, Hexa executive desk by Nurus designed by Can Yalman, 2008, computer render
prototype, Hexa executive desk by Nurus designed by Can Yalman, 2008
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May 14th, 2008
NOA’s residential projects in the Galata Tower area
For about 20 years now the area around the Galata tower has been the focus of constant real estate speculation. It has been talked about endlessly as the first big thing in downtown Istanbul’s eventual gentrification. The new Soho, the new Marais, yuppies, wine bars, cafes, urban hipsters etc. etc. the future for the neighborhood that was once home to Istanbul’s Christian community was all but a done deal.
20 years on the area seems to finally be living up to the hype. While up the street in Tünel and Asmalımescit cafe society is booming, down around the tower we will soon soon the completion of a number of residential buildings that is set to make the Galata district Istanbul’s second bourgeois bohemia enclave (after Cihangir). And the credit has to go to the company that is doing the most to realize this effort, the property developers NOA led by the young, dynamic Sarp Tiryakioğlu. You can check out the NOA projects, 3 residential properties of rental apartments on their web site. These are primarily refurbishments of nearly 100 year old buildings with the only contemporary architecture here being the renovation of ALI HOCA 6 building by the architect Elif Özdemir.
I had a chance to visit the as yet to be completed Ali Hoca 6 a couple of weeks back and was impressed by the simple and straightforward design by Özdemir who seems to be expert at doing a lot with a little. Despite a fairly limited budget her direct use of industrial materials against the cleaned up skeleton of the old building creates a agreeable harmony between old and new that brings a contemporary flair to this ancient neighborhood. Both NOA’s Tiryarkioğlu and Özdemir have to be given credit for the detailed and difficult work that will undoubtedly be a benchmark in Galata’s property sector.
May 13th, 2008
Zaha Hadid master plan for Kartal, Istanbul, stone quarry area around E5 highway
In an era of massive change in urban centers, Istanbul is set to make its mark as a major world city with a signature project for the 21st century. The Kartal, Zaha Hadid project, or as it is officially known, the Kartal Industrial Area Central Business District Plan (Kartal Sanayi Bölgesi Merkezi İş Alanları Planlaması) is the city’s most ambitious building project undertaken in recent memory. If it is built according to Hadid’s master plan, the 555 hectare site stretching from the Sea of Marmara up to the stone quarries of the E5 highway will be an important business district and center for tourism and leisure. Furthermore, the project’s focus on business and tourism activity will make it an important alternative business district to Istanbul’s current Central Business District in the Levent-Mazlak zone as the city attempts to make a mark on the global stage. Hadid’s design, an ambitious architectural vocabulary of flowing forms and undulating lines in steel, glass and concrete never seen before in the country, promises to be a bold statement in futurism for a city dominated for so long by it’s history.
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May 13th, 2008
“Work on oneself, in as much as one is a collective singularity; construct and in a permanent way re-construct this collectivity in a multivalent liberation project. Not in reference to a directing ideology, but within the articulation of the Real. Perpetually recomposing subjectivity and praxis is only conceivable in the totally free movement of each of its components, and in absolute respects of their own times—time for comprehending or refusing to comprehend, time to be unified or to be autonomous, time of identification or of the most exacerbated differences.” Felix Guattari, Three Ecologies.
Ilhan Koman, PI Series of experimental forms derived from mathematical formula, 1980-1983. photograph by Tayfun Tunceli. Courtesy Koman Foundation.
The history of design in the West is one that is tied closely to industrialization and excludes elements of the vernacular and everyday, what I would call anonymous design or design by non-designers. In a country like Turkey where most objects lack design pedigree, different social and designs traditions of local origin are more relevant to object making and design then one this closely tied to the canon of Western design history, industrialization and capitalism. For example, the recognition of the sensory dimensions of the environment seen in design from places like Brazil or Mexico or the efficacy of handicraft and materials in Scandinavia, these contexts show another history of design outside of industrialization and ultimately more relevant to this Turkish context.
Today because of the ecological crises the notion of universal or standardized concepts of living promoted by industrialization and capitalism is starting to lose validity. Instead we are starting to see that there are certain efficiencies to be gained from an individual’s built environment in the history, culture, and climate of his or her immediate surroundings. In Turkey today this question of the role of universal/standardized concepts of modernity is being questioned. I believe this questioning, in these first years of the 21st century, in the light of the ecological crises the canon of design is an extremely valuable contribution to the global discourse in design. We can no longer be so concerned with a particular style or idiom mordern or not, we instead need adjust this addiction to only the modenr to accept other ways of living and social practices.
These premodern social practices are those that need to be studied today to create a new value system for contemporary design and object creation in Turkey. We need to focus on a combination of environmental, social and mental realities existing in the cultures found in Turkey’s geography for thousands of years. Cultures such as the nomadic Turkic culture, Selcuk, Byzantine and Ottoman civilizations, Islamic philosophy, Shamanistic religion, Anatolian peasant society and Sufi traditions are just a few of the many premodern practices that should be accessed. I want to be clear that the cultures should be accessed not for any aesthetic or cultural agenda. Instead what I am proposing is that in an era when basic resources such as oil, food, water, are beginning to dwindle, we need to figure out other ways of doing things that are not as wasteful as industrialized capitalism. The source for other ways of doing things are these premodern ways of doing and creation that are still found in great number and still in use in Turkey and Anatolia.
Turkey’s geography is a great source for these practices relying on hand-made and craft and for natural, organic and authentic materials. From soap to silk, ceramics to candles, marble to iron, there is abundancy of local materials and techniques that can be be utilized that are valid today. The task is to combine these materials and technical practices with contemporary ways of doing things in technology especially that also provide similar efficiencies. The resourceful combination of the two, the premodern practices with the very contemporary technologies and methods will yield new and valuable ways of doing things. These ways of doing and creating will be extremely important as a change in the way industrialized capitalism works. Turkey is at a position now where it has the resources to articulate this agenda, advanced know-how and technology on one side, valid premodern ways of doing things on the other. It is a matter of combining the two to create a new vision for 21st century living based on the unique perspective afforded by Turkey’s geography and cultural heritage.
May 12th, 2008
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