Global Design Forum is coming to İstanbul
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Global Design Forum İstanbul is launching from 13–16 May 2026. Here's a preview of what to expect from the programme.
Few cities offer a stage as rich and idiosyncratic as İstanbul. This May, LDF’s flagship thought-leadership programme makes its international debut here, in collaboration with People Places Ideas, bringing a powerful spirit of creative exchange to one of the world’s most remarkable cultural landscapes.
Across four days of talks, installations and experiences, leading international voices from a mix of creative disciplines will come together to explore how design can respond to – and thrive within – a world defined by interconnection, complexity and coexistence.
The theme of the Forum's discussions “Worlds in Contact” will tackle what it means to design in a time when inherited frameworks for understanding the world are no longer sufficient. As societies navigate overlapping crises, the talks programme will explore design not as a search for a universal language, but as a practice that embraces multiplicity, recognising diverse ways of living, knowing and making.
This edition will combine two days of thought leadership talks with a broader programme of citywide engagement, including ‘İstanbullar: Design Route’, site-specific installations and a new garden design competition - each designed to animate the city and engage local and international audiences alike.
Meet the Team
Melek Zeynep Bulut
Melek Zeynep Bulut is an award-winning Turkish multidisciplinary artist and designer. Melek’s work synthesises space, experimental architecture, behavioural sciences, and visual arts. She focuses on the complex interplay between material, experimental circulation fiction, and human consciousness, exploring and exhibiting how existence and subjectivity are shaped by space.
She is also the founder and director of the creative, intellectual platform People Places Ideas (PPI), where she leads all Creative Strategy, Curation, Research and Art & Design & Culture Policy projects.
As Artistic Director, Melek Zeynep Bulut will shape the vision of this special edition. Her approach focusses on connecting the city’s unique identity and creative energy with the wider international design community.
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“I see design not merely as the production of objects, but as the touching of collective consciousness, resonance and time. I am excited to bring this approach into a broader, more civic sphere, and collective scale.” – Melek Zeynep Bulut
Beatrice Galilee
Beatrice Galilee is a London-born, New York-based curator, critic, and cultural advisor, internationally recognized for her expertise in global contemporary practice. She is the co-founder and executive director of The World Around, the global platform for design and architecture and the author of Radical Architecture of the Future (Phaidon, 2021).
Beatrice joins Global Design Forum İstanbul as Forum Content Advisor, guiding the direction of the talks programme and convening a speaker line-up grounded in inclusion and cross-cultural exchange. This will include leading designers and thinkers whose work engages directly with the urgencies of our time, from climate and migration to technology and civic life.
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“Rather than proposing a single narrative, we are foregrounding multiple perspectives and practices that operate across cultures and disciplines. Istanbul, a city defined by contact and convergence, offers a powerful context for this dialogue.” – Beatrice Galilee
Ben Evans CBE
Ben Evans CBE is the Founder of Global Design Forum and the Director of London Design Festival, which he co-founded with Sir John Sorrell CBE in 2003. He has been a Governor of the University of the Arts London, a Board Member of the Roundhouse, and a Trustee of Artangel. Since 2017 Ben has been Chairman of the Mayor’s Cultural Leaders Board - a statutory advisory group to the London Mayor. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary degree from the Royal College of Art and graduated there in 1989.
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“The launch of Global Design Forum İstanbul marks an exciting new chapter in our mission to create a truly international platform for design dialogue. İstanbul’s unique position at the crossroads of cultures makes it an inspiring setting to explore how design can respond to global challenges while celebrating local identity.” – Ben Evans
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