‘Made in Şişhane’ is a long-term project that aims to pair Turkish master craftspeople to contemporary designers.

Start of Made in Şişhane
‘Made in Şişhane’ was founded by Aslı Kıyak Ingin in 2006 during the ‘Istanbul Design Week’ which took place between 12-17 september 2006, at the old Galata Bridge-Balat, within the context of idw (İstanbul Design Week). “Made in Şişhane”, organized an exhibition and a series of panel discussions. For each exhibited work, the work’s production process within the district, its story and the route it followed were also explained with the purpose of exposing the existing variety and the production networks.

Aims of Made in Şişhane
The “Made in Şişhane” project first of all aims to get a better understanding of the networks in Şişhane. The movement in the district is generally perceived as a chaos, but is in fact a sign of an important and a meaningfull communication and production network. Secondly it enriches the production networks with the participation of designers, artists and architects. Creative people become mediators to evaluate the possibilities for sustainable future developments and give testament to its intangiable heritage. ‘Made in Şişhane’ asks: How can design have a positive role in the sustainable development of a small scale production region? What kind of potentiality do the small scale production regions and the producers have for the designers?

Context
The new policy of urban generation in historical Istanbul includes areas with significant cultural heritage. The perspective of this renovation policy lacks the social dimension of sustainability and tends to replace the mature and colorful fragmentary texture with shiny shopping centers and chain hotels while ignoring the unique cultural establishment of communities. The aims of this project are to help the habitants stay in their native land, to institutionalize their material culture (which is being rejected by the local government), to help them gain self-confidence via learning the production culture, and finally to equip them with social and economic toolkits of community empowerment.