The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, titled A School of Schools and curated by Jan Boelen with associate curators Nadine Botha and Vera Sacchetti, enters its final days, during which it will host a series of intriguing public events.
Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by VitrA, the biennial has brought together projects by more than 200 interdisciplinary practitioners from across the globe in six of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions in the Beyoğlu district – Akbank Sanat, Yapı Kredi Culture Centre, Arter, Pera Museum, SALT Galata, and Studio-X Istanbul.
Alongside the six-week-long exhibition, A School of Schools has presented an ambitious public programme featuring 146 events designed to expand learning beyond the walls of the classroom, taking it into the streets, and sharing it with the city. Multidisciplinary practitioners including designers, architects, artists and scholars are pooling their expertise to explore the many dimensions of design as learning and learning as design.
The public programme will conclude with the Housing the Human symposium and the Design as an Attitude presentation, both taking place at Yapı Kredi Culture Centre. The result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between five European institutions and organisations over the course of a year, the Housing the Human symposium, which will take place on 2 November, will feature sessions moderated by experts from the fields of architecture, art, science, and technology, exploring what might it mean to house the human – today and in the future. On 3 November, award-winning design critic and author Alice Rawsthorn will talk about her latest book, Design as an Attitude. Conceived as a guide to contemporary design, Design as an Attitude demystifies the field by exploring the most dynamic developments in design, and assessing their impact on humanity.
Other highlights of the last two weeks of the biennial include the workshop Design Fault Lines by design scholar Livia Rezende, an enquiry into the fault lines in design practice, discourse and education. Additionally, several international students will be in residency. Their projects include Reverse-engineering Economic Mania by the University of Underground, which investigates colonial trade connections between the Netherlands and Turkey, and the Dutch invention of speculative trade methods; and New Grounds by Ineke Hans with students from University of the Arts Berlin, which delves into the products, projects, strategies and services our society needs to flourish now and in the near future.
The programme will continue with presentations and talks including a lively E-Number bingo and the Sweet Creativity interactive talk by Eat Art Collective; a presentation of the book Global Tools: 1973-1975, edited by Valerio Borgonuovo and Silvia Franceschini; and a Blockchain Seminar and Workshop by Burak Arıkan, who will explore how encrypted communication has evolved.
Further details about these events can be found on the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial: A School of Schools website and the biennial’s social media platforms. The biennial exhibitions, which will be open until 4 November, can be visited with “Sesli Rehber,” a mobile application that also features an audio-guide in English. The app is available to download free from Google Play and the Apple App Store.
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