Written by Özge Adanır
Project: "Constructables" - Mert Onur
Ters-Yüz: Re-thinking the potentials was realised at the santralistanbul campus on 28 May – 16 August 2019. The exhibition, which featured the senior design projects of Department of Industrial Design students at Istanbul Bilgi University, invited designers and users to reconsider the relationships they form in a social, cultural, and economic context. Six students who took the course titled IND 324 Design Writing and Editorship wrote about six projects from the exhibition.
The relationship between the pieces and projects coincides with one of the aims of the Istanbul Design Biennial, which is forming a space of constant learning and reflection. In order to encourage young people to reflect upon issues that revolve around design, the IDB will be publishing these six pieces every week.
Next up is "Acquaintance of design via inclusion" by Özge Adanır.
An ordinary detail of an object for a kid can become much more different and complicated than how adults define it. We have all made up thousands of stories with the knob of a drawer or the legs of a table when we were kids. We have all created stories of heroes that stem from details or we have all transformed that detail in our story and given it a new function.
Mert Onur comes from a family of engineers. Since his father liked to repair everything at home, Mert grew up watching him. His interest towards details and production also started back then. Legos, undefined objects, and details have always been the main characters of his games.
The proposal he presented as a part of the 2019 graduation projects for Istanbul Bilgi University Department of Industrial Design is based on these details. Mert collects details that have not yet fulfilled their function in assembly lines from selected places in Istanbul. The half-products that he collected so far are connection pieces from a chandelier shop in Karaköy. He brings these parts to a wood turnery in Eminönü and creates a new product by combining two materials there.
Mert takes an industrially created part out of its context and introduces it to craftmanship, rethinking possibilities of detail and production. He defines his project, Constructables, as a design and production activity.
The contemporary user started to become passive and lose their ability to create while they carry on living through consumption. At this point Mert proposes a system that will enable the user to become more active and be a part of production. He designs not the product, but the method that creates the product and leaves the product with an ellipsis for the participant to intervene with the final product. He presents information on where to get the half-products and how to find the craftsman as well as technical specifications of the proposed product to the participant through the leaflet he designed. After they buy the leaflet of the product, the participant draws on it if they would like to make changes in the form of the product. Participant takes a production tour on a specified route, collects the half-products, goes through Galata Bridge and reaches Eminönü. Here they show the drawn form on the leaflet to the craftsman and lets them create it on the turnery, finally combining the half-products they bought with the wooden piece crafted.
While providing a critique to the user’s tendency towards consumption, Constructables also contributes to local economy. Regions of Karaköy and Eminönü are critical in terms of the informal economy they host. While Karaköy is known for ready-made pieces, con-struction materials, raw materials and hardware stores, Eminönü is a region that houses markets, craftsmen and houses of craft. The biggest factor in choosing these regions is the availability of personalised production. It is not possible to stumble upon uninstitu-tionalised and unregulated production elsewhere in the world. The geography we live in and the accessibility of production provides the ground for the designer to develop alternative methods.
The significance and the vast history of craftsmanship in Turkey is disappearing because of our fast consumption practices. What provides the connection between product and user is nothing more than sale. As the information on the product gets blurry, it becomes harder to know the person, machine, method that produces the product. How do you determine the value of a product in a system based on buying, consuming, and destroying? This is why inclusion is important.
Today we do not go to a market even to cook. In fact, we don’t even cook. There are com-panies that provide meals that we need during the day to where we work, where we live or where we study. We don’t know where the food comes from, how it is made and who cooks it, just like we don’t know how the products we buy are made. Yet if we cook our-selves, the food becomes more delicious and valuable. We buy the materials first, bring them home. Then we wash, we cut and combine everything, then wait with patience for it to cook. In short, we ‘spend’ time.
It is incomplete to interpret the role a product in our life only in terms of how it fulfils our needs. The spirit of the product defines its value too. Rethinking user-product interaction and providing information transfer on the product can be done through design. What brings ‘acquaintance’ with the product is the intervention of user in the process, the time they spend and their observations. The sustainability of information in a pacified society is only possible through inclusion. Design can turn into a tool for transfer of knowledge and an important actor in transformation of user habits.
