Guest post by Esin Arsan. Check out her Core77 gallery of IDW 2009 highlights here!

This year, Istanbul Design Weekend took place between the 18th and 21st of June, with the theme "Mediterranean Design between Present and Future". The four-day event offered two sets of activities, linked by a focus on Mediterranean design. The first group consisted of major exhibitions and cultural initiatives, while the second group allowed ambitious visitors to tour all the participating showrooms, malls and design stores in Istanbul, who were invited to participate in a competition for best installation around the fair's theme.

Istanbul Design Week used to take place at the old Galata Bridge in Balat. However this year, the city itself—especially the European side—became the exhibition venue for the event. This was a special opportunity to visit the local design firms in their own environment. There were problems posed by spreading into the city, however, like the insane amount of time required to tour all events and the poor way-finding signage, especially for people from outside the city. It is rare to find two parallel streets in many parts of Istanbul due to its hilly terrain and old city planning. Additionally, the maps provided for each event zone were less informational and more abstract graphics. People at Lunapark told us on the first day of the event that they had already heard numerous complaints about this and were seriously considering placing additional signage on the streets to give better directions to the visitors.

Our adventurous tour in Zone 1, which covered the Taksim, Beyoglu and Galata area, brought us to the doorsteps of Ilio, whose showroom was one of the highlights of the event. In fact, it won first place in the weekend's installation competition. The housewares brand of the Istanbul-based design firm Demirden Design, Ilio has won several Red Dot and IF awards. View photos of their tabletop and furniture designs here.

The student participation in the event had significantly decreased from previous years. Rather than finding the same orientalist designs that have been coming out of industry for years now, it would have been exciting to discover the more daring and experimental work of local design students. For example, Marmara University and Mimar Sinan University from Istanbul, and Anadolu University from Eskisehir were the only three universities that displayed their works at Addresistanbul, hosted by the architecture faculty of Istanbul Technical University in the beautiful Taskisla building. On the other hand, the majority of the participants of the "Mediterranean Design between Present and Future" competition, exhibited at the Mozaik showroom, were students. Judging from the participant profile of the competition, however, the results could have been much richer, had the organizers made a more wide-spread announcement within Turkey and all of the other Mediterranean countries. Although this exhibition was announced as one of the major happenings during IDW 2009, the installation was less than stellar. Check out the entries here.

Like the show at Mozaik, many of the exhibitions at IDW 2009 needed work. Maybe curators and organizers did not have high enough expectations in terms of visitor traffic, but it was disappointing to see four-day long exhibitions that did not even have their signage and information graphics up in the afternoon of the third day. These situations indicate that maybe these exhibitions were organized only for their private openings. This 'invitation only' approach, however, does not do much for reaching out to the public and democratizing design.

The "Detour Moleskine" exhibition at Santral Istanbul was definitely one of the highlights of the IDW 2009 event. 50 international artists' Moleskin notebooks were on display, allowing visitors to go through their sketches, drafts, drawings, and notes in person. Istanbul was the fifth stop of this traveling exhibition after London, New York, Paris and Berlin. In addition to the notebooks of the international artists, an accompanying exhibition called 'myDetour' showcased selected notebooks of students from Istanbul Bilgi University, Domus Academy and the winners of myDetour Berlin. Snapshots from this exhibition can be viewed here.

Thanks to Detour Moleskin, I was able to visit Santral Istanbul for the first time. Before Istanbul Bilgi University opened Santral Istanbul in 2007 as a house for contemporary arts and cultural activities, the building served as the first city scaled power station of the Ottoman Empire. Built in Halic, which used to be the oldest industrial zone of the city, Silahtaraga Power Station was the provider of Istanbul's electricity between 1911 and 1983. The station is well-conserved and now a cultural entity that can revitalize the surrounding neighborhood.

Finally, the opening of the Design Library Istanbul was also great news for the city. The library, which is the third branch after Milano and Shanghai, is located in Eski Sapka Fabrikasi in Haskoy. The location which used to serve as an old hat factory on the shore of Golden Horn will now be an important resource for design lovers in Istanbul.

Check out the album for more photos from Istanbul Design Weekend 2009.