Garanti Gallery (GG) was a cultural institution based in

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, specializing in

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

and

urbanism Urbanism is the study of how inhabitants of urban areas, such as towns and cities, interact with the built environment. It is a direct component of disciplines such as urban planning, a profession focusing on the design and management of urban ...

. Through its various exhibitions, lectures, conferences, workshops and publications, GG filled a great gap regarding its areas of expertise in the city and the country in general. GG was the first venue in Turkey to host the exhibitions of works by internationally renowned architects and designers such as

Steven Holl Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is a New York–based American architect and watercolorist. His work includes the 2022 Rubenstein Commons at the Institute for Advanced Study; the 2020 Campus expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston inc ...

Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid ( ''Zahā Ḥadīd''; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-born British architect, artist, and designer. She is recognised as a key figure in the architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born ...

Archigram Archigram was an avant-garde British architectural group whose unbuilt projects and media-savvy provocations "spawned the most influential architectural movement of the 1960's," according to Princeton Architectural Press study ''Archigram'' (19 ...

Hella Jongerius Hella Jongerius (born 30 May 1963 in De Meern, Utrecht) is a Dutch industrial designer. Biography Jongerius was born in De Meern, a village to the west of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1963. From 1988 to 1993, she studied design at the Design ...

Konstantin Grcic Konstantin Grcic ( sr-lat, Konstantin Grčić, sr-Cyrl, Константин Грчић), born 1965, is a German industrial designer known for his design of furniture and household products, some of which have been featured in design shows and ...

, Ezri Tarazi, and Yossi Lemel.

History

GG was founded in 2003 with the support of

Garanti Bank Garanti BBVA (legal name Türkiye Garanti Bankası A.Ş.; formerly referred to as Garanti Bank in English) is a Turkish financial services company based in Turkey. 86% of Garanti's stakes are owned by the Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argen ...

. Until August 2008, it organized thirty-one exhibitions at its 70m2 gallery on Istiklal Avenue. Throughout its active period, its programs were shaped by the contribution of an advisory committee made up of Bülent Tanju, UğurTanyeli, Han Tümertekin, Alpay Er, Semra Öndeş and honorary member
Bülent Erkmen
and Sibel Asna. GG was directed by Münevver Eminoğlu (2003–2005) and Pelin Derviş (2005–2010). In 2010, GG merged with

Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center The contemporary art institution Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center opened in 2001 and was located on the pedestrian Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Turkey. Platform Garanti organized exhibitions; conferences and events; hosted an internationa ...

and the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre (OBARC) under the auspices of Garanti Kültür AŞ to form a new institution –

SALT In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

Exhibitions, Events, Workshops

The exhibitions at GG aimed to explore all types of design and to open them to discussion. The exhibition entitled ''Wearing Architecture Inside Out, Rural Studio: Architecture as Transgression and Ambiguity'' questioned the concept of social responsibility in architecture by focusing on the experiences the students of

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...

participating in the applied architecture workshop “

Rural Studio The Rural Studio is a design-build architecture studio run by Auburn University. It teaches students about the social responsibilities of the profession of architecture and provides good houses and buildings for poor communities in rural west A ...

” had with their “clients” living well below the poverty line in

Hale County, Alabama Hale County is a county located in the west central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. I ...

. Curated by Aykut Köksal, the exhibition entitled ''Soundspace: Spatial Works in Contemporary Music'' showcased examples of

spatial music Spatial music is composed music that intentionally exploits sound localization. Though present in Western music from biblical times in the form of the antiphon, as a component specific to new musical techniques the concept of spatial music (''Raumm ...

produced after the 1950s, accompanied by drawings, texts, video recordings of performances and video works based on these compositions. As part of this exhibition, a concert of spatial music works was organized, a first in Turkey. In another project GG cooperated with OBARC to depict in two exhibitions and a book the intellectual and architectural journey of Turgut Cansever, one of the most original and dissident architects of Republic Era Turkey. Directed by Uğur Tanyeli and Atilla Yücel, this project was the first retrospective exhibition of an architect based on archival documents. The range of topics GG opened up for debate in the area of design included the digital world. ''Project MUTEN Istanbul'' exhibited the urban design proposed b
KOL/MAC
one of the leaders of digital architecture, for the Galataport area. Based on network intelligence and strategies, this design was a different and productive scenario that displayed the contradictions and vicious circles in the ongoing debates concerning the area. Following Project MUTEN, the number of experimental works at GG increased and their content became more varied. As one of the stages of the long-term project Fibrous Structures directed b
Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto
an
Nilüfer Kozikoğlu
''Fibrous Room; Evolving Structural Logic'' exhibited not the design product per se but rather a phase in the

design research Design research was originally constituted as primarily concerned with ways of supporting and improving the process of design, developing from work in design methods. The concept has been expanded to include research embedded within the process of ...

process. The life-size prototype made of woven hollow fibers developed in time as the fibers were filled with concrete one month later and as the concrete then solidified. Curated and designed b
Marcos Novak
the exhibition entitle

dealt with turbulence as a formal principle and a condition of the global metropolis. Novak examined the turbulent topologies of currents, links, connections, networks and stratifications by using high-tech fragile statues and a virtual environment that the bodies of visitors turned into physical sound and images. After the exhibition in Istanbul, ''Turbulent Topologies'' was exhibited at Palazzetto Tito (Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, 2008) concurrently with the 11th Venice Architecture Biennial and at IVAM (

Institut Valencià d'Art Modern The Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (; ; English: "Valencian Institute of Modern Art"), also known by the acronym IVAM, was the first center of modern art in Spain, opening in 1989 in the city of Valencia. The Institut Valencià d'Art Modern is a ...

, 2009) as part of ''Confines'', a retrospective curated by

Aaron Betsky Aaron Betsky (born 1958 in Missoula, Montana) is an American critic of art, architecture, and design. He was the director of Virginia Tech's School of Architecture + Design until early 2022. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale ...

. GG supported the content of all exhibitions with lectures, conferences, panel discussions and workshops, thereby aiming to create an environment of discussion and production. The most radical example of this was ''Hackers and Haute Couture Heretics: Subconstructive Strategies in the Fashion System''. Curated b
Otto von Busch
the exhibition examined how the processes of hacking, shopdropping and

craftivism Craftivism is a form of activism, typically incorporating elements of anti-capitalism, environmentalism, solidarity, or third-wave feminism, that is centered on practices of craft - or what has traditionally been referred to as "domestic arts". C ...

were used as tactics at the outskirts of fashion. Throughout the six-week period while the exhibition was open, Busch held workshops with artists and designers who proposed new work methods within the fashion system. The aim of the workshops was to create a variety of practical low-level interventions and perspectives from which to look upon fashion both as a phenomenon as well as a material that can be transformed. ''Becoming Istanbul'' is one of the long-term research and publication projects begun by GG to discuss the method of exhibition as part of the exhibition content itself, and has now been passed on to SALT. For the purposes of the exhibition, an interactive database has been constructed to help defy the received wisdom and clichés that accompany the debates on change and transformation that have been going on in Istanbul for a long time. The database included artist videos, photography series, architectural projects, TV news items and cartoons reflecting the current state of the city, and was projected onto the walls of the exhibition space, allowing each user to browse the database by using a mouse connected to the system. ''Becoming Istanbul'' was exhibited at the

German Architecture Museum The Deutsches Architekturmuseum (English: German Architecture Museum), or DAM, is located on the Museumsufer in Frankfurt, Germany. Housed in an 18th-century building, the interior has been re-designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers in 1984 as a set ...

(DAM, 2008) in Frankfurt
Deutsches Architektur Zentrum
(DAZ, 2009) in Berlin an
Al Riwaq Gallery
(Bahrain, 2009) in Al Manama. Curators of the exhibition, Pelin Derviş, Bülent Tanju and Uğur Tanyeli, edited the multi-authored dictionary ''Becoming Istanbul'', which was published in English and German in 2008. The book was published in Turkish in 2009 under the title ''İstanbullaşmak: Olgular, Sorunsallar, Metaforlar''. The same year saw the publication of Tracing Istanbul rom the air a book made up of interviews based on aerial photographs b
Oğuz Meriç
and edited by Meriç Öner, as well as ''Mapping Istanbul'', which was edited by Pelin Derviş and Meriç Öner and brought together the views and research of numerous academics and experts through maps, diagrams and texts. The exhibition can be visited a

between September and December 2011. The online version of the interactive database can be accessed at http://database.becomingistanbul.org .

Publications

Between 2005 and 2010, GG published exhibition yearbooks as well as various books related to exhibitions and other projects.
''GG 2003-2004''
Garanti Gallery 2005, Istanbul,
''GG 2005''
Garanti Gallery 2006, Istanbul,
''GG 2006''
Garanti Gallery 2007, Istanbul,
''GG 2007-2008''
Garanti Gallery 2009, Istanbul,
''Turgut Cansever Düşünce Adamı ve Mimar''
Uğur Tanyeli, Atilla Yücel, Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center and Garanti Gallery 2007, Istanbul,
''Mimarlığın Aktörleri Türkiye 1900-2000''
Uğur Tanyeli, Garanti Gallery 2007, Istanbul,
''Becoming Istanbul: An Encyclopedia''
Edited by Pelin Derviş, Bülent Tanju, Uğur Tanyeli, Garanti Gallery 2008, Istanbul,
''Becoming Istanbul: Eine Enzyklopadie''
Edited by Pelin Derviş, Bülent Tanju, Uğur Tanyeli, Garanti Gallery 2008, Istanbul
''İstanbullaşmak: Olgular, Sorunsallar, Metaforlar''
Edited by Pelin Derviş, Bülent Tanju, Uğur Tanyeli, Garanti Gallery 2009, Istanbul,
''Tracing Istanbul (from the air)''
Photography: Oğuz Meriç, Edited by Meriç Öner, Garanti Gallery 2009, Istanbul,
''Mapping Istanbul''
Edited by Pelin Derviş, Meriç Öner, Map design: Superpool, Garanti Gallery 2009, Istanbul,
''ISTANBUL PARA-DOXA / Conversations on the City and Architecture, Boğaçhan Dündaralp, Aslı Kıyak İngin, Nilüfer Kozikoğlu''
Edited by Pelin Derviş, Garanti Gallery 2010, Istanbul,

Transdisciplines Lecture Series

GG organized a 12-session “Transdisciplines Lecture Series” in collaboration with Platform Garanti in 2008 and 2009. The lectures aimed to open to discussion the production environment that would transcend disciplines as envisioned by the new institution to be formed by GG and Platform Garanti while the process of unification and change undertaken by these two entities still continued. Lecturers in chronological order were Marcos Novak, Marie-Ange Brayer,

Peter Taylor Peter Taylor may refer to: Arts * Peter Taylor (writer) (1917–1994), American author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction * Peter Taylor (film editor) (1922–1997), English film editor, winner of an Academy Award for Film Editing Politic ...

, Fiona Raby of

Dunne & Raby Dunne & Raby is a London-based design studio established 1994. Dunne & Raby uses design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of current and eme ...

, George Legrady,

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

, Charles Waldheim, Nikolaus Hirsch,

Peter Cook Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English comedian, actor, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishmen ...

, Gijs van Oenen, Ciro Najle and

Trevor Paglen Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work covers mass surveillance and data collection. In 2016, Paglen won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and he has also won The Cultural Award from the ...

Architecture and Design Archive Turkey

Architecture and Design Archive Turkey (ADAT) became active in 2008 under the direction of the historian o
modern design in Turkey
Gökhan Karakuş as the joint project of GG and Platform Garanti, with the aim of demonstrating the historical development in the fields of architecture and design in Turkey. ADAT treats architecture and design as two main factors that complete each other, and as two separate denominators of a shared practice. Archival work followed two different research methodologies in the fields of architecture and design. Architectural research began with the “senior architects” in Turkey includin
Cengiz Bektaş
Utarit İzgi
Turgut Cansever
Sedad Hakkı Eldem and Kemali Söylemezoğlu. The personal archives of the architects were digitized and catalogued, and became part of ADAT. A chronological approach was organized in the field of design history in Turkey by Archive Curator Karakuş with images from the personal and institutional archives belonging to a number of important Turkish designers including the KareMetal Group of the 1950s, the Koz family (MPD), Yıldırım Kocacıklıoğlu (INTERNO), ceramicist Sadi Diren, Gorbon ceramics
Aziz Sarıyer
(Derin) an
Yılmaz Zenger
that were digitalized and catalogued. During the three initial years of active research, ADAT collected over 20,000 digital images and more than 4000 physical material. Since 2010, ADAT continues its activities as a part o
SALT Research

Library

In 2007, GG began to expand the modest library it had formed with the purpose of aiding the research necessary for its exhibitions and events. In 2008 it merged with the library of

. A serious and research-based investment is now under way to include the canonical and most recent publications of a great variety of disciplines that will contribute to the fields of architecture, design and urban planning. The library's holdings open to the public a
SALT Research
on November 22, 2011.

References

External links

*Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centr

*Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Cente

*SAL

{{coord missing, Turkey Art museums and galleries in Istanbul Art museums and galleries established in 2003 Art museums and galleries disestablished in 2010 2003 establishments in Turkey 2010 disestablishments in Turkey