Photos by Gizem Özkol

We listened to the story of the atlas collection, curated by IN-BETWEEN, from the platform’s co-founder Dilek Özturk.

We can go ahead with the story of the project if you want.

I would like to tell you about IN-BETWEEN as a platform first.

IN-BETWEEN, as you know, means ‘between things’. We are carrying out projects that bring institutes, organisations, designers and academies together and create value through design.

The reason we call this composition a platform is because it is a very comprehensive concept. You have the same eye level, you bring together, you become a facilitator. As socio-political, environmental and economic balances change in the world, our ways of creating value through design change too and we create models that can be implemented to today’s world. I am a part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture at Istanbul Bilgi University. My partner Bilgen Coşkun is the director of Fashion Management in Istanbul Fashion Academy. We believe in carrying out projects that connect academia with practice.

We have been collaborating with Sweden Institute and Sweden Consulate General in Istanbul for the last three years within the scope of Equal Spaces project. We are looking for ways of working together for creative, smart and inclusive cities with city planners, architects and designers. We organise exhibitions, workshops and talks within the scope of these themes where we match architects from Turkey and Sweden. Apart from transferring knowledge and experience, one of the main aims of the project is to learn together. We focus on issues like democratisation of design, more participatory architecture and volunteering in urban development.

When we talk about design today, we cannot ignore environmental awareness. Today, good design transcends the scope of improving the user’s life and positions itself in a context where it improves the environment and the world. It is crucial to do this in a language that everyone can understand, because design also is an important medium of communication. In that context, we carried out upcycling themed workshops and training programmes with European Union Turkish Delegation and designer Pınar Akkurt. We conveyed what people can do daily about plastic use through examples.

Issues like the relationship between academia and practice, or producer and designer are already discussed in detail. By naming this as a platform, or directly calling it IN-BETWEEN, you try to facilitate that state of mediation.

Yes. The mediation here still includes an active representation. Right now, we are positioned in Tomtom Designhood as IN-BETWEEN Design Space. With the selection there, we become a medium of news about the design scene in Turkey and the world. Art Culture is much more evolved in Turkey compared to design. Art does not have to convince masses, but design does.

There are a lot of topics that correspond to contemporary design. We observe that today, instead of creating something from scratch, designers reuse what already exists through their own interpretation, without compromising on what they believe. When we look at the landscape of young design, we see that what shapes ideas and approaches is the changing dynamics of the environment and the world. Hence, we focus on how we can express what is going on in the world through design. We can create environmental awareness or social impact; we can benefit disadvantages groups.

I understand that atlas is a creation of that thought process too. At the same time, it relates to what you just said about the designer’s concern with following or adapting the contemporary. I also realised that you use a term like ‘inclusive social design’ when talking about the project. What does that mean?

atlas is the product of a collaborative and participatory process. What is inclusive in this project is that every actor in the project stands side-by-side and the project shapes up around everyone’s suggestions and comments.

The project is carried out with the Harran District Governor Ömer Faruk Çelik’s lead with support from Family Support Centre (ADEM) within the Governorship of Harran. The collection, curated by us as IN-BETWEEN Design Platform includes works from Aslı Smith, Barış Gün, Begüm Cânâ Özgür, DAY Studio, INCOMPLIT, and Şule Koç.

atlas sits on a model that supports women in Harran and Syrian refugee women in gaining economic freedom, taking part at the centre of production in wood, mat, ceramic and weaving workshops in ADEM.

With atlas, we are fortunate to directly observe how design creates social benefit. We can sit together with women in Harran workshops and eat together, prepare food together. Women in production has given us feedback throughout the project and the designs changed accordingly. We learned a lot from them, they learned a lot from us.

A big part of the income from sales goes to the women. These types of projects can be left at the research phase or may not be able to find the funds in Turkey. We had limited funds for materials and production. Now, the project is self-sustaining. In order to do that, inclusivity had to be very firmly placed. A lot changed in the lives of Harran women as they gained a profession and an income from that land.

Can you tell us a bit more about the structure and operation of the project?

Our first field trip started on August 2017 with an invitation from Harran District Governorship.

International Labour Organisation (ILO) invests in regions with refugees. However, this investment is not directly by cash. It is an economic aid for post-war rehabilitation of these people, to give them professions and to support their integration to the community. Wood, ceramic, lime and weaving workshops were in place when we went there. İŞKUR provided master craftspeople, ILO was providing materials, and Governorship of Şanlıurfa and District Governorship of Harran undertook the bureaucratic operation of the workshops, in which common souvenirs were produced. The only missing part in terms of added value was design. So, we first conducted a research trip, visiting the area with both archaeologists and locals.

We are talking about the land of Mesopotamia. Harran, which has a history of 12.000 years, means ‘passage’. Ancient civilisations like Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans have passed, lived, stayed here, and left both architectural and cultural marks about their believes. The land is dry but the marks underground about the pagan culture and belief are so colourful. School of Harran is commonly referred to be the first university in the world. Mathematics, especially astronomy here had a crucial role. There were scientists here that researched the connection between the Moon and the Earth, measuring distances between different planets. It is also the land where the New Platonism philosophy was born.

First, we needed to understand the context, the land. So we formed an advisory committee with the research. We needed to create a more transparent and objective field for the project. The committee is comprised of Harran District Governor Ömer Faruk Çelik, Assistant Professor Dr. Veli Şafak Uysal from Istanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Architecture, archaeologist and president of Harran excavation area Professor Dr. Mehmet Önal and founder and president of Şanlıurfa Association of Woman Entrepreneurs Cevahir Asuman Yazmacı.

Then we brought the designers together. We were expecting the designers to get to know the culture here and be comfortable with the global design discourse. We were searching for designers that could adapt the aesthetics and accumulation of Mesopotamia, designers that we believe spoke the same language as us. We picked six design studios whose approach to design we believed in and wanted to take part in the project.

There two important legs to this collection. First is to transform Mesopotamian culture and accumulation into functional objects that can be used in daily life. The objects travel to different media, different lands with you and carry knowledge. The second leg is the social impact of the project, women’s sustained activity in production. We have changed some forms of production during the process. For instance, we have relocated Begüm Cânâ Özgür’s Sin and Şamaş wall weaving production to workshops in refugee camps. In central Harran, wood, ceramic and mat works are being produced. We organised a three-day workshop for women in the refugee camp with Cânâ. We didn’t even speak the same language. Most of the women only talked Arabic. After the workshop women began weaving successfully. If we made this happen without speaking the same language, anything is possible.

The most important reason we organised these training sessions in camp was to ensure access to women there. Half of the women coming to central Harran from the Family Support Centre were coming from the refugee camp. A bus would come at 8 in the morning with them, and the same bus would take them back to the camp at around 3 or 4. Some of the women couldn’t even do that because their husbands, their families did not let them. We weren’t able to fully reach women in the camp, so we brought weaving to camp. They were saying they couldn’t get out, so we produced pulleys in the wood workshop, took the ropes and everyone worked from their house at the camp. They sent us the outputs and made our first exhibition in Milan Fashion Week.

This was 2018, right?

Yes. We got lots of feedback in this process too, so the production and design changed.

Maybe we can talk about the products, touching on how each of them sits within mathematical and geometrical contexts of that culture.

Of course. Şule Koç designed a wellbeing set for atlas named Sogmatar. Wooden room diffuser, pencil case and plate with a lid that can be used on both sides. Harran has been a very important land for people to understand, reflect on, and improve themselves. We translate this today as ‘wellbeing’. Şule took references from Harran being a culture and accumulation land, from civilisations that have brought the philosophy and science age furthest.

Öykü Özgencil is the founder of the brand INCOMPLIT. INCOMPLIT works with disadvantaged children, placing fashion design on a model that provides social benefit. The bags that Öykü designed for atlas were produced in the camp. But as you know, many refugee camps in Turkey have been emptied with a new regulation that was introduced last summer. We were able to track the relocation of some of our trainees. We are grateful to Harran Family Support Centre coordinator İbrahim Kızıl for this.

Emel, one of the women in camp that make the best stitching to the bag was relocated to one of the surrounding villages of Harran. As her child had autism, she couldn’t get out of the house. We bought him a sewing machine and she sewed bags to be enough for us in this transition period. The process of atlas relies on adapting to changing dynamics.

Öykü’s design represents the relationship between the earth and the sky. The wooden handle of the bag comes from the H-Cut base that Barış Gün designed.

Barış is a designer that works with ceramic. He worked with wood in atlas as he believed wood needed special care, much like the core of Harran. On one hand, wood is a very solid material. H-Cut references the contours of architectural forms you see in Harran and represents the layered structure you see in Harran. To me it resembles a sculpture.

It is actually in parts, right?

Yes, you can dismantle it, like different layers of Harran.

But when they come together, it really has a structure that resembles a sculpture.

Yes, but it is actually very functional. You can use it as a cutting board, or even present food if you like.

The Mırra cup set designed by DAY Studio references the architecture of Harran and Mesopotamia, the mathematics and the rhythm that repeat each other on the sides. For this, they first took moulds out of three-dimensional printers. Then we went to Harran, to the workshop and cast it from plaster. Three different colours along earth colour was produced. The reason for that is about the land as it connects with a thousand colour tones of the earth, of Mesopotamia. It reflects the colourfulness of people, beliefs and cultures at the same time.

Begüm Cânâ Özgür interpreted The God of Sun and The God of Moon. Cânâ has a unique technique that breaks traditional weaving. She finds weavers, producers for patterns that she designs herself. So, she is an entrepreneur at the same time, which is very important for the contemporary design scene. Actually, every designer here has an attitude, a stance that they reflect both on atlas and on products they design in their own studios. This was the most important thing that brought us together.

For atlas Aslı Smith designed a mat rug and wall textile collection titled Kosmos, which was inspired by the ancient Mesopotamia motifs in Harran region and the seven planets – seven Gods pagan culture of Sogmatar. Moon and Wisdom Rug is inspired by the God of the Moon Sin and tells the fertilisation mythos of mother earth, death and reincarnation. Stars and Luck Rug tells the Goddess İştar, the godlike power given to celestial beings in Mesopotamia paganism and the interaction of this power with the earth. Sun and Fertility Rug tells a very power and creative celestial figure, the God of Sun Şamaş and his universal blessing. The Astra mat wall textile collection references astral, architectural symbols of Mesopotamia and the nature of Harran region.

When the first prototypes were being produced in 2018, Luca Molinari was in Turkey, and we mentioned the project to him. We wrote this story for the April 2018 edition of Platform magazine. Then Luca invited us to Milan, to the showroom of Platform, and suggested exhibiting there. We did not want to just do an exhibition in Milan. We produced a short film with GPOD Production before Milan that tells the project and showed the film in our Milan Design Week premiere. People from different countries and positions attended it. They made comments from their points of view and it really worked. It strengthened and enriched the artful expression of the works.

Towards the end of 2018, we were invited to Design Week Turkey and exhibited the project there. In February 2019, we took part in Stockholm Design Week as part of the Equal Spaces project. We had an ‘open day’ in Stockholm where we hosted different groups around a table and talked about the exhibition from 4 in the afternoon to 10 at night.

Lastly, I want to ask this: Do you have plans to continue the atlas project somewhere else or in different regions of this land after Harran? Besides being an important project on its own, can it also be approached as a method towards the future?

atlas took its place in the global design scene as a model that provides social benefit through design. We will keep working on strengthening and enriching this model. We plan to collaborate with different designers and be in a bunch of points of sale in Europe. In Turkey, we display in our own area in hipicon, Ham:m Design and Tomtom, selling there. We want to carry this experience to other areas.

Thank you for this delightful conversation.

Thank you too.

Click here for more information on Atlas Harran, and here for more information on IN-BETWEEN.