The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, titled A School of Schools, focuses on the theme of design education, reinventing the biennial format into a productive process-oriented platform for researching, experimenting and learning. Nearly 100 years after the Bauhaus, the design discipline and the world are very different places, but design education has mostly remained the same. Yet, education traditionally allowed for spaces of exception where experimentation and new ideas can be tried and tested. A School of Schools manifests as a set of dynamic learning formats encouraging creative production, sustainable collaboration, and social connection. Engaging multigenerational, transdisciplinary practitioners from Turkey and abroad, the biennial brings together old and new knowledge, academic and amateur, professional and personal, focusing on process as much as the outcomes. Agents in this complex and ambitious ecosystem will create new knowledge, search for alternatives to implemented systems, and push the boundaries of the design discipline.

åbäke is a collective of four graphic designers whose work focuses on the social aspect of design and the strength that collaboration can bring to a design project. Their work includes posters, books, installations in art galleries and events that revolve around watching films, dancing, cooking, eating, and teaching.

Aformal Academy is an experimental school program initiated by the Rotterdam and Pearl River Delta-based architecture and design office Land and Civilization Compositions.

ARK.WORLD is a joint designers venture, founded by Roosje Klapin Amsterdam.

Nelly Ben Hayoun is an award-winning designer and filmmaker working at the intersection of science, theater, politics, and design. Based in London, her roles include chief of experiences at WeTransfer, designer of experiences at the SETI Institute, advisor to the UN Virtual Reality Labs, and founder of the tuition-free University of the Underground.

Jurgen Bey studied at Design Academy Eindhoven and has since run studios independently or in collaboration with others, while teaching at Design Academy Eindhoven, and currently, at the Royal College of Art in London. Bey's work includes product, furniture, interior, and public space design, and is produced by his studio, or by companies such as Droog, Royal Tichelaar Makkum, and Moooi.

Jan Boelen is artistic director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt and artistic director of atelier LUMA in Arles. He holds the position of the head of the Master in the department Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. Since the opening, Z33 House for Contemporary Art is a unique laboratory for experiment and innovation and a meeting place with cutting-edge exhibitions of contemporary art and design. With Z33 Research, design and art research studios established in 2013, Boelen is transforming Z33 from exhibition-based to a research-based institution. Boelen curated the 24th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana in 2014, and serves on various boards and committees including the advisory board of the Victoria & Albert Museum of Design Dundee in the UK and Creative Industries Fund in the Netherlands.

Nadine Botha, assistant curator, is an independent curator and writer based in Rotterdam. Winning the Gijs Bakker award for her master’s project, she graduated from the Design Curating and Writing master’s program at the Design Academy in 2017. She works with the Van Abbe Museum, Design Academy Eindhoven, and DAMN magazine, among others. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Metropolis, and Dirty Furniture, among others.

Cihad Caner is an artist based in Rotterdam and Istanbul. He works with photography, video, CGI, and sculpture to explore the image culture around the other, everyday objects, and circumstances such as war, resistance and immigration. He has a master’s in media design and communication from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.

Taeyoon Choi is an artist, educator, and activist. His art involves performance, electronics, drawings, and installations that form the basis for storytelling and social practice. In 2013, he founded the School for Poetic Computation in New York with the motto “More Poetry, Less Demo."

Commonplace Studio is the Netherlands-based design practice of Jon Stam and Simon de Bakker, whose are work focuses on context-driven objects, quality craftsmanship, and quiet interactions.

Danilo Correale is an artist and researcher who lives and works in New York and Naples. Through the lenses of time and body, his considers the labor-leisure relationship and sleep, among other things. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples and NABA in Milan. In 2017, he was associate research fellow at Columbia University, New York.

Teis De Greve is a Rotterdam-based digital designer and developer who investigates our relationship with technology by reconstructing everyday electronic artefacts. After completing a master’s at LUCA School of Arts, Genk, he was selected for the Toegepast 21 young designer mentoring program.

Ecole Mondiale is a collective founded in 2014 by designers Ive Van Bostraetenand Filip Van Dingenen, who are joined for Fieldstation: Timeby Sue Spaid and Jean Katambayi (DR  Congo). Provoked by notorious colonialist King Leopold II’s proposed postgraduate school, the loose collective of artists develop novel strategies to integrate thinking, doing and feeling.

Navine G. Khan-Dossos is a visual artist based in Athens. She focuses on the complex relationship between Islam and the West in both historical and contemporary contexts. Her approach to this research is rooted in traditional western art history, whereas her painting isbased on training in the philosophy and craft of Islamic art.

Farzin Lotfi-Jam is principal of Farzin Farzin, a multidisciplinary studio that designs spaces, software, and media. He teaches at the Irwin S Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, and studied at Columbia University and RMIT University.

Offshore Studio is a Zurich-based design studio, founded by Isabel Seiffert and Christoph Miler. Their projects have a strong focus on editorial design, typography, and storytelling. Offshore Studio’s practice reflects the fundamental idea of “Offshoring”—the relocation of working processes to other cities, countries, and continents. Going offshore means to elude closed territories and start to connect elsewhere. Offshore Studio is the graphic design firm for the 4^th Istanbul Design Biennial.

Onagöre is a living, multi-functional workshop, and an expression space for the creative and productive chemistry that has developed between artist and architect Ali Taptık(Turkey) and graphic designer Okay Karadayılar since 2005. Onagöre is a compound word that roughly translates as “relative to [subject]."

New South is a Paris-based research platform founded in 2015 by a group of architects and urban planners of various origins, united by a forward-thinking vision for cities of the Global South. Meriem Chabaniand Maya Nemeta curated the Istanbul installation, with production by Evan Giles.

Ana Peñalba lives and works in New York. Her research practice investigates the intangible socio-political forms of the city built by our collective imaginary. She studied at the Polytechnic School of Madrid (ETSAM), and teaches at the School of Architecture at Barnard-Columbia.

Thomas Pausz creates scenarios for alternative material cultures. Using a variety of media from artefacts to films or scenography, Pausz’s work reflects on social and environmental change, questions appropriate technologies, and the mythology around production and value systems.

RADIOEE.NET (radio espacio estación) is a nomadic, translingual, online radio station. It hosts 24-hour broadcast events about mobility and movement while itself on the move. It transmits multilingual voices, music and sound to global audiences, unfolding an audio portrait of a place in time.

Emelie Röndahl is an artist weaver and currently undertaking PhD studies in craft at the Academy of Design and Crafts (HDK) in Gothenburg, Sweden. Röndahl also earned a MFA in 2012 at HDK, and studied two years of traditional (Swedish) weaving at two different folk high schools.

Vera Sacchetti, associate curator, is a Basel-based design writer and critic. She is cocurator of TEOK Basel, cofounder of editorial consultancy Superscript, and presently serves in a variety of editorial, research, and curatorial roles. She was formerly curatorial advisor for the 24th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, web editor at Domus, and coeditor of The Adhocracy Reader for the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial.

Helga Schmid is a design researcher, designer, and lecturer currently based in London. She completed a practice-led PhD in design interactions and visual communication at the Royal College of Art, where she teaches on Information Experience Design.

Judith Seng researches the possibilities to expand design practice through a performative approach in relation to the material. Her work is staged both in applied daily life as well as international exhibition and academic contexts. Seng’s experimental production series ACTING THINGS explores the overlap between process design and elements and methods from the performative arts.

SO? is an Istanbul design, architecture, and urbanism studio founded by Sevince Bayrakand Oral Goktas. Having won awards and exhibited around the world, they both currently teach at MEF University in Istanbul.

Stitching Worlds is an arts-based research laboratory initiated by designer Ebru Kurbakat the University of Applied Arts Vienna and funded by the Austrian Science Fund. Kurbak is an artist, designer, and educator based in Vienna. She received her master’s degree in architecture from Istanbul Technical University, and has lectured at the Istanbul Bilgi University and University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz.

Studio Folder is an agency for visual research founded by Marco Ferrariand Elisa Pasqual in 2011. Folder helps people visualize their ideas and concepts through a diverse range of work including editorial, art direction, exhibition design, brand identities, data visualization, websites, and digital publishing.

Mark Wasiuta is a curator, writer, and architect who teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.