11 Questions for... the designer collective ISTANBUL'DAN

We are ISTANBUL'DAN: Laura Jungmann, Dorothee Mainka, Pierre Kracht, Jonathan Radetz, Michael Konstantin Wolke and Florian Saul. We are designers spread all over Germany and travel together to Istanbul. In Istanbul's historic artisan quarters you can find a variety of small workshops, which despite a great potential of knowledge and technology are facing long-term extinction. We set out to counteract the precarious prospects for the workshops through cooperation. The result is a series of objects that demonstrate new approaches to design through close collaboration with local artisans.

02. What did you want to be when you were little and why?

Given the diversity of the group, I think six individual answers would go beyond the scope of this interview. In the end, however, none of us could have imagined working in this constellation on such an exciting project as ISTANBUL'DAN.

03. What do you like about your work or what makes it special?

That will definitely be the place and its people, the craftsmen and workshops, the material bazaar, the food and at the end also the glass of Turkish tea, which is like an invitation to get to know the people you work with a little better.

04. ...and what not at all?

As practical as it is sometimes to come from five different cities and even states, it also sometimes makes it difficult to work together. In the end, we are united by our enthusiasm for the project and our love for the city. In Istanbul, we then work together in one place, even if the city is sometimes very chaotic.

05.What is your most important work utensil?

Even if we as Germans refuse plastic bags, in Istanbul it is probably the plastic bag we get from the craftsman. Which we then fill with all the materials and first samples. One has the feeling as if one would run the whole time, with one and the same bag from craftsman to craftsman and at the end the product or the experiment is ready. Last time, many also had their own cloth bag with them. It looks really bizarre to see grown people wandering through the alleys of Istanbul armed with bags.

06. What is the most beautiful thing about your workplace?

With the project ISTANBUL'DAN we have created our own prototype workshop. Here we not only find the inspiration for our creations, but we can also have the things implemented right away. We often like to call this real-time prototyping. For us, it stands above more modern processes like 3-D printing. There's no faster or better way to intervene in the creation process.

07. Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you?

In the end, we all differ a lot in the way we work, but as we learned in Istanbul, this heterogeneous approach also seems to enrich each other a lot. The city and especially the artisan districts of Sishane and Galata, the people and especially the intercultural exchange and what can come out of it, serve as inspiration.

08. What went really wrong in the last months?

When things go wrong, it is often due to communication. But now we have finally found a way to be in a lively exchange without always having to find appointments. Now there is a fixed day and a fixed time, who can take part in the conference call and we discuss what is going on, if there is nothing you can also just talk about private things. It is always important in the end.

09. What is your next goal? Which projects are coming up?

Everyone is always working on their own projects and often you take ISTANBUL'DAN with you. For example, I will be exhibiting in Milan at the SaloneSatellite and will have a few works from Istanbul in my luggage there. An exhibition on an international stage is a good opportunity. At the moment, ISTANBUL'DAN is about how to open up the project so that even more attention can be drawn to this cultural exchange. Design can overcome political distances as a means of communication. One can be curious about what is still to come.

10. You have just recently won the Federal Government's Culture and Creative Pilot award. Congratulations. What has changed for you since then, what has stayed the same?

Becoming a Culture and Creative Pilot was not a quest for another award for us, but the opportunity to enter into a dialogue with like-minded people who are following a similar path, but also the chance to pass on what we have learned so far and establish a project with more long-term goals. Through this exchange with the experts and other award winners, some questions have been answered for us, so that we can work on the contents in a better and more target-oriented way.

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