Participants have been announced for the 4th edition of Istanbul Design Biennial, curated by Jan Boelen with Vera Sacchetti, Associate Curator and Nadine Bothaas, Assistant Curator, under the theme of "A School of Schools."

Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) and sponsored by VitrA, this year's edition of the Biennial will bring together old and new knowledge, academic and amateur, professional and personal, engaging multigenerational, transdisciplinary practitioners from Turkey and abroad.

Themed as "A School of Schools", the Biennial will discuss the challenges faced by design education in today’s changing world and it will explore alternative models of design education in general, conceiving design education as a new experimental space. 

"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," stated in a press release by IKSV.

Digestion School. Image © Offshore Studio

The 4th Istanbul Design 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 programme within which to respond to global acceleration, generating alternative methodologies, outputs and forms of design and education.

School of Earthquake Diplomacy, Navine G. Khan-Dossos, courtesy of IKSV

The Biennial will start from 22 September to 4 November 2018 in six venues of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions, which will play host to the biennial's many schools, exploring the multiple dimensions of design as learning.

See participants for the 4th edition of Istanbul Design Biennial below:

[AI]stanbul (TR/US)

AATB (CH/FR)

Åbäke (FR/UK)

Bakudapan (ID)

Kerim Bayer (TR)

Cihad Caner (TR/NL)

Ali Murat Cengiz (TR/NL)

Taeyoon Choi (US/KR)

Commonplace Studio (NL)

Jesse Howard (US/NL)

Tim Knapen (BE)

Danilo Correale (IT, US)

Amandine David (FR)

Teis De Greve (BE)

Derya Irkdaş Doğu (TR)

Eat Art Collective (NL)

Ecole Mondiale (BE)

FABB (TR)

Studio Folder (IT)

Avşar Gürpınar and Cansu Cürgen (TR)

Mark Henning (NL/ZA)

Nur Horsanalı (TR/FI)

Ils Huygens (BE)

Navine G. Khan-Dossos (UK/GR)

Roosje Klap (NL)

Land+Civilization Compositions (TR/NL)

Pedro Neves Marques (PT/US)

Margarida Nunes da Silva Mendes (PT)

Alexandra Midal (FR)

Carlos Monleón (ES/UK)

Gökhan Mura (TR)

Martina Muzi (IT)

Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios (FR)

New South (FR)

Camilo Oliveira (BR/IT)

Thomas Pausz (FR/IS)

Ana Peñalba (ES)

Juliette Pepin (FR)

Charlotte Maeva Perret (UK)

Radioee.net (AR/USA/NL)

Emelie Röndahl (SE)

Helga Schmid (DE)

Judith Seng (DE/SE)

SO? (TR)

Studio Legrand Jäger (UK/DE)

Studio Makkink & Bey (NL)

SulSolSal (NL/ZA/BR)

Jenna Sutela (FI/DE)

Ali Taptık and Okay Karadayılar (TR)

Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione (US/FR)

Unfold (BE)

Ottonie Von Roeder (DE)

Henriëtte Waal and Studio Klarenbeek & Dros (NL)

Mark Wasiuta (US)

Lukas Wegwerth (DE)

Pınar Yoldaş (TR/US)

Peter Zin (NL/PT)

Six weeks, six venues, six schools

Over the course of six weeks, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial will inhabit six of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions, which will play host to the biennial's many schools, exploring the multiple dimensions of design as learning.

At Akbank Sanat, the Unmaking School emphasizes the irrepressible human instinct to be creative as a pedagogical dynamo that drives innovation in production, redefines the future of work, and reframes our engagement with our cities.

At Yapı Kredi Culture Centre, the Currents School explores flows, networks, distribution, and hierarchies of information and subjects, both digital and analogue, abstract and embodied, to critically examine new technology and systems. 

At Pera Museum, the Scales School investigates the fluidity of taxonomies, quantifications, and institutionalised norms, standards and values to highlight biases and assumptions in our social, economic and intellectual agreements.

At Arter, the Earth School asks what is natural, what is disaster, and what is evolution when the planet and human are forced to renegotiate their pedagogical relationship. 

At SALT Galata, the Time School travels from hyper-speed and acceleration into the expansiveness of deep time, learning about contested pasts and speculative futures from paradoxical durational perspectives and the objects that dictate them.

At Studio-X Istanbul, the Digestion School learns from metabolic systems, patterns of consumption, cultural rituals, and food infrastructure to consider how circular education and lifelong learning manifest.

A School of Schools: Orientation

The opening programme, A School of Schools: Orientation, held from 20 to 21 September 2018, will see practitioners, educators and thinkers from Turkey and abroad converge in a biennial conceived as a public space for dialogue, provocation and production. Together, they will test and revise a variety of educational strategies to reflect on the role of design, knowledge, and global connectedness in contemporary Istanbul and beyond. All are invited to take part, and join in the creation of spaces of exception.

Top image courtesy of A School of Schools

 > via IKSV/A School of Schools