If you are now thinking of Oriental arts and crafts á la the Thousand and One Nights, you are barking up the wrong tree. It is time to leave such clichés behind and take a look at contemporary design from Turkey. In Istanbul a young and very vibrant design scene starting emerging a few years back and it definitely goes about things with a fresh and witty approach on two continents. It has absolutely nothing to do with ethno-design. Turkish designers are interested in the same questions as their Western colleagues. Aziz Sariyer, the founder of the label Derin Design, puts it clearly as follows: "If I design a toothbrush, why does it have to be Turkish?"Even ornaments are primarily functional. That goes for the red metal rod system BUDAK by the two newcomers Ünal & Böler, for example. Chair height, branching individual modules can be inserted into each other and piled up into spatial structures as tall as houses. They can serve as seating and as shelves and are one of the most extraordinary pieces of structural furniture anywhere. SALKIM also comes from the wiry duo's studio. It is a filigree construction for storing books (the term "shelf" would be too heavy), on which individual wire modules with clothes hooks hang on each other and the books are stored freely hovering in a slanted position.
Or we can take Autoban. Architect Seyhan Özdemir and interior designer Sefer Caglar have personally designed the interior of most of the shops and cafés in which they drink their espresso. However, they do not have much time for it, as Autoban's creative output is enormous. Therefore designs and products from the areas of interior design, product design and architecture have been on display since 2006 in their own gallery. A further example is VitrA. The successful company of the Eczacibasi Group has morphed in only a few years from supplier of sanitary ceramics to complete brand provider. One-stop bathroom collections, including those by designers such as Ross Lovegrove and Matteo Thun, as well as production facilities all over Europe, have given VitrA the characteristics of a global market leader.VitrA received the red dot Award for best product design twice in 2006, namely, for Ross Lovegrove's bathroom collection ISTANBUL and for the IZNIK tiles designed by Defne Koz. The Wallpaper Award for Best Young Designer of 2004 went to Autoban, just one year after it was founded, as did the Best New Restaurant Award of 2006 for their MuzedeChanga interior. Ünal & Böler received the MAK Design Shop Award 2006 for SALKIM. Typical Turkish design.www.ub-studio.com
www.autoban212.com
www.vitra.com.tr