DESIGN IS AN ENDING ADVENTURE AND JOURNEY, WE CONTINUE OUR JOURNEY BY DEVELOPING DAY BY DAY…
Our style; to create creative and calm, remarkable and simple spaces that they will be modern but will include local and ethnic textures and sometimes will be decorated with avantgarde textures. In fact, creating simplicity is the most difficult; but I have always liked the finer details in simplicity.
1. First, can we start listening to your story, Ms. Yesim?
I graduated from Bilkent University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design in 1994. After my graduation, in the first years of my professional life, I started my career in my company by conducting interior architecture, project and application works in the American offices such as Microsoft and Cisco, the housing project of Mexican Embassy, many stores and restaurants. Then, we continued our career to specialize in hotel projects.
2. When was Robin’s Design established?
We proceed to work on projects and application areas in Robin’s Design with my team of architects and interior architects who are experienced in their fields and have high knowledge in design development. We perform interior design projects and application works in hotel, residence, office and villa projects. We have performed many hotel projects and application works, mainly 80% in the international chains, for the last 15 years, so place designs and hotel projects are actually more interesting for me. After graduation, when I carried out house, office and ahop projetcs, I felt that I would be more excited for me to perform hotel design and applications and started to improve myself in this area. We are a little more specialized in this journey. Design is a non-ending adventure and journey, we continue our way by developing day by day…
3. How many people do you work with? What of kind distribution is in the team?
We work together with 14 architects and interior designers. Nurdan Demirtas, who has been working as an interior designer for many years, is a design director in the office, 2 persons are visualization experts of projects and other our team members, which of them is valuable to us, also work in the fields of design and application. We have a design line has been formed over the years and the biggest factor forming this line is that our team is also in an experienced and solid working system.
4. Could you tell us about your performed projects and works with Robin’s Design?
We are currently building 2 shopping centers in Crete and Marrakech. We are also building a thermal spa hotel project in the Karlovy Vary region in Prague. What excited us was the launch of Smart By Dedeman 3 months ago. We have 2 villa projets in Istanbul and a villa project in Bodrum. Wyndham Grand Bursa, which is one of our most enjoyable projects, is a very enjoyable hotel project. This hotel project, which will give a new imulse to Bursa, is a hotel project with 247 rooms and a closed area of 35 thousand square meters. We have been designing this project for a year. I guess it will operate in 2019 or 2020. We designed another tea house concept called Doctor Tea Co Cafe and this project has been going on for three years. We opened a tea house in Dubai and two tea houses in Ankara and we try to make a new Turkish brand an international brand with our employer and we enjoy being in this team.
Our projects which ended in 2016 and are still continuing:
Wyndham Grand Hotel / Bursa
Novotel Zeytinburnu / Istanbul
Ambiente Hotel / Prague / Karlovy Vary
Smart By Dedeman Hotel / Istanbul
GEBKİM Hotel / Gebze Organized Industrial Zone / Istanbul
Durosac Town Villa / Hotel / Shopping Center / Romania
Pullman & Mercure Hotels Spa Project
Crete & Morocco & Vietnam Shopping Center
Ladybug House / Bodrum
Blend Office / Macka Armani Residence
Doctor Tea Co Cafe Ankara – Dubai
Jab Showroom / İstanbul
Zorlu Residence Foyer
5. You have been working with Dedeman Hotel for many years and you have created “Smart By Dedeman” brand together. How has this brand progressed and how is it now?
New generation hotel brand: Smart By Dedeman
We have been working with the Dedeman Hotel brand for many years. Dedeman Group, which created the first Turkish hotel brand, wanted to create a new brand with its new generation and investor-friend hotel project again, so we created Smart By Dedeman with Dedeman team and our project group. We have been involved in the whole design process of this project for two years. A hotel that new generation will use white collar. Y generation behaves very differently. Namely, they act according to social media. Briefly, investors, operators are a seriously advantageous hotel brand for the new Y generation. Dedeman’s own knowledge and the power of its brand that has been formed for years, combined with our design and emerged a very pleasant hotel brand. We are very happy and proud to experience this process and to be a part of this innovative project process. We will be be in many cities since this year. We will meet with investors from many countries and different cities in the country. We will be in a useful and comfortable segment for the younger generation.
6. What are the elements that you attach importance and want to bring them into the forefront in your designs? How do you interpret your style? Are there any designers you like and get inspired by their work in this context?
Since I perform commercial, namely, hotel, office, shop, and restaurant projects and also work with brands, so the current lifestyle and technology guide us, and we proceed with developing lifestyles and designs based on technology. The most important thing is that the investment is reasonable as a budget and customer satisfaction. Our style; to create creative and calm, remarkable and simple spaces that they will be modern but will include local and ethnic textures and sometimes will be decorated with avantgarde textures. In fact, creating simplicity is the most difficult; but I have always liked the finer details in simplicity. I am actually impressed by all the art fields and activities around me in interior architecture. I take serious advantages rom a film or opera, exhibitions, or travels. I think all branches of art are intertwined with each other. I feel obliged to stay in touch with each of them and to follow both the past and the near future. Even when I go abroad for sightseeing and holiday, I especially prefer to stay in different hotels to get inspired. Of course, there are special designers such as Antonio Citterio, Phlipstarck and Aziz Sariye, who always inspire me.
7. What kind of works do you perform in the field of urban design? How do you find the architectural approach and urban transformation studies in cities?
Urban transformation should be respectful to the cultural texture, silhouette and identity of cities. They should involve design solutions that are considerate to the lifestyles and expectations of those living in those areas, and where they can also participate in, but I think that the current practices are disconnected from each other, do not take into consideration the current fabric of the city where people live in it, and do not follow a transparent policy.
8. What do you think what type of methods we should implement to proceed in order to adapt the architectural studies in our country to EU standardization?
When international brand investments increase his awareness will improve too. We expect the increase in tourism investments that do not ignore the nature, history and people in the sector, and the coming of new good brands embracing these values to our country and bring the sector up with these brands. I would like to say that when you look at the world, in fact, our country gives more importance to brand quality and values than other countries. Turkish investors are far ahead in this area and brand sensitivities. The more institutions in our country formed their own brands in their own fields allow tourism investmenst, the more we develop and go forward.
When I graduated from Bilkent University, Interior Architecture Department, if I think I had to tell the investor where and how the interior architecture would be located, I can say that the interior architecture is in the place where it should be in the 20th year of my career life. However, we still have a long journey to plan the interior architecture with architectural projects simultaneously and to start with this principle during the construction stages. When we reach this awareness, the whole process will be much more efficient in terms of time management.
It has been 8-10 years, interior architecture is evaluated in our country. Interior designers consciousness has also increased a lot in Turkey in recent years and we have advanced to be able to intervene from the beginning of projects. I think that our designs need to be more original and developed on the international platform with ethnic motifs, but consisting of technology elements in order to create all of this.
9. Architecture is a work performed with technical instruments in our current world. In your opinion, has this development had an impact on the artistic side of architecture?
In fact, I think that architecture, by its nature, is basically a profession where art and technical instruments should be used together, but as information and technology increase, sometimes artistic textures disappear and faster production works emerge. Sometimes, I feel that our goals should be to leave buildings that will be worth work for future generations if we think that we still follow the traces of the buildings that are built with the spirit of new missionary, even the buildings that have lasted for even longer years.
10. What are the challenging parts in interior architecture? What advice do you have to your colleagues in this jouney with over 20 years of work experience?
My colleagues at the beginning of their career always have to be in progressing. The things decorating creativity in terms of an architectural point is not only the design world, I have always believed in it, and when our new graduates started work, I always said to them; visual or audio arts such as opera, theater always feed us, we can benefit from all areas. The most difficult part of this is definitely to apply them. It is both painful and difficult to turn the place you dreamed into reality.
11. Finally, what are your expectations and purposes?
In the sectoral sense, we expect to increase in tourism investments not ignoring people, nature and history, to come new good brands to our country with these values again and tor ise the sector up with these brands. I would like to say that when you look at the world, our country gives more importance to brand quality and values than other countries. Turkish investors are far ahead in formed brand sensitivities. In our country, as much as the tourism investments formed their own brands in its fields get allowed, we develop and go forward as a sector.