The Istanbul Design Biennial returns for its second edition this November, with an interesting array of projects inspired by changing perceptions of the future. In the past 50 years, both the concept and aesthetic of the what design will mean in the future has altered dramatically. You only have to look tin foil-coated gadgets from science-fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s to see warped predictions of how humans would live in a hundred years’ time. Humorous now perhaps, but those designs say a great deal about the creative thinkers of the time, as well as society’s concerns and aspirations.
It’s with this in mind that the curators of the second Istanbul Design Biennial have set the intriguing theme of ‘The future is not what it used to be’, using it as a jumping-off board for ideas about how we might, or could, live in the coming decades. Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts and curated by Zoë Ryan, the biennial will take in work from the fields of graphic, product design, fashion, technology, film and food, and explore topics as broad as disaster relief, social media network analysis and changing views on identity. More than fifty international practices will exhibit as part of the biennial including Forma Fantasma, Moisés Hernández, Architecture for All, Bless, Dunne & Raby (whose work is pictured above) and RUF.
Commissions of note include Tweeting Architecture: What hath 140 characters wrought! by Istanbul-based architects Cansu Cürgen and Eren Tekin, a data visualisation of design-related tweets and what they mean for society; #occupygezi architecture by Architecture for all, which looks at architecture’s role in the global Occupy protests; and Lepsis: The Art of Growing Grasshoppers by Mansour Ourasanah, which looks at alternative methods of dealing with a growing global population and imminent food shortages – namely in the shape of breeding grasshoppers for food.
Istanbul Design Biennial
Various venues
1 November - 14 December 2014
iksv.org/en