Derya Adiyaman

Designers’ Odyssey ’94 Exhibition is considered as the ‘starting point of the odyssey of Turkish designers’ since it was the first national design event organized professionally. My dissertation focuses on this journey’s actors, shifting dynamics and the role of various mechanisms that have shaped the industrial design profession in Turkey.

Building a 'Turkish' industrial design identity has recently been addressed and discussed in the industrial design field of Turkey in order to differentiate in the international market. This rich and complex field of research and practice has also been a territory not only occupied by many stakeholders such as professional organisations, business structures and educational institutions, but also contributed by various popular media entities including magazines, newspaper pages and TV programmes on design.

The discussions around these questions and the struggle to define Turkish national design have significantly increased as the Turkish industrial design circle is presented to the international market. It is gaining attention and become more important to establishing a unique identity. At this point, the question of what the boundaries and contents of that new identity should be has been included to the agendas of the actors of the field.

The fundamental intention that motivated the study was to survey this industrial design scene in Turkey and look into the reasons for this quest of Turkish design identity that led to the emergence of different approaches and mechanisms. These catalysed the shift between the early phases of the discourse and the new complex system of actors and the relationship between their understandings of national design.