Talk - Mercado Design Days Istanbul

Yellowdot at Mercado Design Days 2025: A Celebration of Craft, Conversation, and Creativity

We’re excited to announce that Yellowdot will be participating in the first edition of Mercado Design Days, taking place from 15–18 May 2025 at 212 Karaköy, Istanbul. As part of this vibrant new platform for design, craftsmanship, and ideas, we’re proud to contribute both a special exhibition piece and a public talk that reflect our ongoing journey between design and craft.

Talk: Crossing Boundaries – A Journey Between Design and Craft

On 15 May, from 16:30 to 17:00, Yellowdot co-founders Dilara & Bodin will be on the Mercado Stage to give a talk titled Crossing Boundaries: A Journey Between Design and Craft.

We’ll share our story as a design duo rooted in different cultures—Istanbul and Hong Kong—and how our paths converged in Milan. Our talk will explore how we merge engineering with artistic expression, and how we navigate and blur the lines between traditional crafts and contemporary design. Expect a candid look into our process, inspirations, and the challenges of creating meaningful work across geographies and disciplines.

Exhibition: Ova Red Cabinet

Making its Istanbul debut during Mercado Design Days is the Ova Red Cabinet, part of our Ova collection inspired by the hanging pepper garlands of Gaziantep. These garlands—long believed to bring luck and protection—are reinterpreted in a bold, sculptural language. The cabinet’s soft, clustered exterior echoes the forms of dried red peppers, while its rich textures and vibrant color palette (red, pink, and orange across three editions) celebrate life, fertility, and creativity.

Each cabinet is upholstered with hundreds of handsewn soft shapes, crafted by artisans using Kutnu—a luminous handwoven fabric from Dilara’s hometown of Gaziantep, Turkey. These unique, imperfect pieces come together in repetition to create a sense of rhythm, movement, and harmony. The cylindrical wooden base, steam-bent and seamlessly upholstered, conceals a hidden compartment in contrasting maple plywood, offering a tactile surprise within.

The Ova series embodies the marriage of memory, materiality, and storytelling—core to our practice at Yellowdot.

Mercado Design Days is a new and exciting design event aimed at spotlighting independent studios, emerging voices, and cross-cultural design thinking. With exhibitions, talks, and installations set across the dynamic setting of 212 Karaköy, it promises to be an energizing few days for anyone interested in the future of design.

We’d love to see you there.

15–18 May 2025

212 Karaköy, Istanbul

Talk: 16 May Friday | 16:30–17:00 | Mercado Stage

Exhibition: Ova Red Cabinet on view throughout