Design in Informal Economies: Craft Neighborhoods in Istanbul

Introduction The modes of production in informal economies in developing countries are highly dependent on social relationships, including apprenticeship and vocational training.3 As a result, different design processes can be expected to emerge in informal economies. Such contexts can require a different understanding of artistry, “objecthood,” labor, and time. Some designers in clustered craft contexts in Istanbul, a representative of informal economies in the world, develop strategies and embed their design knowledge in new processes in ways that are not addressed in “modernist” design education. The aim of this paper is to present how the encounter of designers and craftsmen4 can create a genuine blend of practice that particularly stems from dialogical bonds as a new “designing” typology in informal contexts. Such bonds and the practices they engender simultaneously empower designers and local craftsmen, such as goldsmiths, stone setters, neon sign makers, inlayers, coppersmiths, and welders, in urban Istanbul neighborhoods. To explore these new processes, we undertook in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 14 trained professional designers and the master craftsmen who work with them in Istanbul. In this article we selected significantly representative excerpts from these interviews to illustrate how craftsmen and designers coax each other to be open and alert for opportunities that arise during the collaborative production or design process. The research also aims to understand the effects of the unplanned exposure of the traditional culture of “crafts” and the culture of “design” to one another in a context of non-Western modernity.