A spacious sharing space with high ceilings, a team full of energy welcoming us warmly with their smiling faces and a carefully set table for a pleasant conversation. This shared studio, which we are familiar with from All Is Minimal, offers us completely different stories thanks to Nur Saltık and her assistant Sena. How did Form&Seek, which connects, produces and shares with the same enthusiasm and passion from many parts of the world, come to be? We wonder, ask and leave ourselves to this journey.
Form&Seek is a multidisciplinary design studio with an all-female team. Can you tell us about the story of this brand that consists of different design products?
I founded Form&Seek in London in 2013 after completing my master's degree. At that time, I was organizing collective exhibitions through Form&Seek while providing design services with my own studio.
In 2017, I merged my design studio with the Form&Seek collective to form Form&Seek Studio and published our first collection. Under the umbrella of Form&Seek, we have worked with 110 designers and curated 18 exhibitions in 5 different countries. My own product designs have been exhibited and continue to be exhibited in many important international museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt Museum and Shanghai Glass Museum.
In addition to product design, Form&Seek continues to grow as a multidisciplinary studio and develop projects around the world. We are realizing exciting projects in experience design, digital design and service design.
As a brand that emphasizes that process is everything, what are the factors that make a product memorable for you? How is your design and production process shaped?
An idea is not complete unless it is shaped and produced with the right material. For us, the story of the product is very important both as a concept and as a production process.
We enjoy sharing the story behind our products with users. Our projects are inspired by rituals, traditional and contemporary production methods. As the idea for the project takes shape, we involve the craftsmen we work with in the production process. We also share the story of the new technologies we use and try to inspire the direction design can take in the future.
You share a studio with several different brands. On the other hand, Form&Seek also consists of a collective team working from many different parts of the world. How does this cumulative production space and structure affect your products and production process?
Sharing and coming together is one of the fundamental concepts on which Form&Seek was founded. We have realized collective projects since the first year we started. I believe that different talents and dialogues color the projects and increase their impact. As a team, we are located in different parts of the world. Apart from our Istanbul office, we also have a studio in Detroit. I think being international increases the value of projects on global platforms.
What are Form&Seek's future plans? Are there any unrealized projects or new products you want to produce?
It is not easy to answer this question as we are working on projects in many different areas. However, we are currently working a lot on experience design. We really enjoyed the Raw Dinner project we organized last year with Materia Gallery and Argentinian chef Javier Bardauil. We are interested in designing the dining experience. Apart from that, we continue to work on AI and 3D printing. We are working on new materials and forms.
Producing and sharing is our biggest motivation. We multiply together with our environment; the feedback we receive, sometimes a smile we see on the faces of those who use Form&Seek, sometimes the awareness that a subject we focus on during the production phase within the team adds to our lives, and sometimes just the feeling of being together. It keeps us on the road. These are the few works we are working on for now, but we can be with you with brand new projects at any moment.