All Works

Songlines

Production Design at Istanbul Design Biennial

Fields

Field

Design

Art

Keywords

Location

Büyükada, Istanbul, Turkey

Year

2021

Client

İKSV (İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts)

Factsheet İndir

Machines of urban living, spying,

Species that capture the living

A dozen or more shells of voyeuristic devices,

Installed in public, watching the passersby

Prey to none, prone to fly,

Seizing their targets passing by,

Silent hunters, lidless eye,

Nested high, they never die.

Do you recognize the species?

Machines of urban living, spying,

Species that capture the living

A dozen or more shells of voyeuristic devices,

Installed in public, watching the passersby

Prey to none, prone to fly,

Seizing their targets passing by,

Silent hunters, lidless eye,

Nested high, they never die.

Do you recognize the species?

Urban Atölye was responsible for the full concrete production of the Büyükada Songlines installation, realized for the The 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, titled Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one, 2020, to 2021, curated by Mariana Pestana. Working from detailed specifications developed by Studio Ossidiana, the team fabricated over 100 individual concrete blocks, tiles, and sculptural elements that together formed the earthly platform of the floating garden. Each piece was cast using custom formwork techniques, incorporating a range of surface treatments including washed-out finishes, expanded clay polished surfaces, soil-cast textures, shell terrazzo insertions, and iron oxide pigmentation. The platform served as the material foundation of the installation, carrying loose red soil from the islands, herbal plants, volcanic concrete forms, concrete pillows, and vial insertions for live plant specimens.

The concrete elements were produced in a pink-toned pigmented mix developed through iterative material sampling, with recipes calibrated to achieve a warm Mediterranean palette rooted in the geology of the Prince's Islands. Beyond the platform blocks, Urban Atölye also fabricated the marine terrazzo disk, a circular element cast in polished black concrete and embedded with shell terrazzo insertions using oysters, mussels, and sea urchin needles gathered from Büyükada. The disk was cast in four separate quarters and assembled on site, requiring precise coordination between formwork, casting sequence, and finishing.

The production process demanded close collaboration between Urban Atölye team and Studio Ossidiana throughout the construction period, translating an ambitious set of material specifications into physical form under tight timelines ahead of the biennial opening. The concrete works were subsequently donated to the Adalar archipelago and permanently installed in Büyükada following the conclusion of the biennial.