İskele47 and Istanbul's maker scene

In 2014, together with friends I had worked with on many projects, I co-founded İskele47 — a multidisciplinary co-working space in Yeldeğirmeni, Kadıköy.

It began simply as a place of our own, where we could make and experiment together. But it turned into a strange meeting point of Istanbul's digital art scene. One day CNN International was upstairs examining our work while, by chance, BBC World was filming downstairs. Another day students from Columbia University came to visit; another day an Italian artist sat in a corner making her work. Neighbours would come in and ask what was going on — and we could not quite answer. Were we a company, a workshop, an art space? We didn't know, and it didn't matter.

It quickly became one of the meeting points of Istanbul's maker scene: a place for building strange machines, running workshops and sharing tools. In October 2014 Milliyet Cumartesi wrote that “Zihni Sinir would be jealous”, and in November Making Society included it in its portrait of the Istanbul maker scene.

Teaching became part of the practice from then on: VR and Unity workshops for children at CoderDojo, Alkev, Özyeğin University and Kadıköy Mini Maker Faire, and talks on wearable technology.