Fazıl Akın, born in 1988 in Birmingham. He gained his BA and MSc degrees in Industrial Design from the Middle East Technical University. In 2014 he graduated from the Product Design and Management MA Pragram of the University of Arts and Design Lucerne, In 2014 from the Advanced Product Design CAS in Interaction Design of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland. He worked as a designer in Ankara and İstanbul. Currently he pursues his works for a Doctoral degree in Design at the Hessen State University of Art and Design. He gives lectures on Critical Design, Design for Experience, Theories for Design Practise in University of Pamukkale and İstanbul Bilgi University.
Since the early 2000s it has been mentioned that criticism has lost its power, but producing things can be seen as a way out of this situation. Critical design practices can offer a new ways to criticism as a practice that proposes objects and criticizes by designing them.
The Eleştiri (Online) Supermarket has opened a space to invite designers who produced works in the field of critical design in Turkey, or students that are interested in the subject to discuss and explore the field. Short discussions with the designer and academics in the field and a workshop on critical design accompanying works that have been done in the field try to find answers to How do objects constitute criticism? What is the relationship between criticism and the design of everyday life? How such criticism can be carried out in Turkey?
The French philosopher Bruno Latour asks “Why Has Criticism Run Out of Steam?” in a conference he attended in 2003, and questions whether the criticism of current situations can lead to enough change, as discussed by the French intellectuals Jean Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu. Another philosopher, Nelson (2010), on Latour's question, mentions that criticism is actually easily manipulated by powerful ones, complaining about the inadequacy of the arguments, such as the believers of conspiracy theories, or that criticism only try to find deficiencies and does not produce new knowledge. In this case, the issue of how to criticise comes to the foreground.
Making things takes us out of this situation, says Latour (2004). Producing carpenter-like objects can break the cycle of defiance finding criticism (Harman, 2005). Architects, city planners and designers who design the everyday life perhaps can have a role in this regard. After all, making things is part of their practice. Perhaps one of the most striking points in this regard is from Dunne and Raby (2010, p. 22): “…art shouldn't need to exist. In an ideal, utopian world, everyday life would be so rich, meaningful and challenging that we wouldn't need this separate category called art. I kind of feel that art exists because design has failed. Learning from artists, designers should become bolder, more imaginative and critical.”
The Eleştiri (Online) Supermarket showcases projects produced in Turkey as critical design, a discussion with Başak Tuna, Liana Kuyumcuyan and Nur Horsanali on their critical design/ design for debate practices and the alternative design practices in Turkey, another discussion with Can Boyan, Ayşegül Özçelik and Gülşah Özgen - Sıla Bozdeveci on their academic contributions to the field of critical practices within the design and art scenery and a workshop on producing criticisms in form of paper-prototypes.