Ayse Birsel was born in Turkey, a land of contrasts. Birsel and her designs are combinations of contrasting points of view. Like her homeland, where thoroughly modern ideas and practices exist side-by-side with centuries-old structures and customs, Birsel's designs make everything work. Born in the port city of Izmir, the Turkish name for Smyrna, a town more than two thousand years old, Birsel absorbed a Mediterranean cosmopolitanism.
She studied industrial design at Middle Eastern Technical University in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, from 1981 to 1985. A Fulbright scholarship brought her to the Pratt Institute in New York for work on her Masters degree. At Pratt, Ayse especially remembers Bruce Hannah, Rowena Reed, and Peter Barna, from whom she learned a "no-nonsense" view of design--as Ayse says, a way of "distilling problems, solutions, and forms to their essence." This became her design perspective--distilling problems to reveal novel answers.
With charming bluntness, Ayse tells people that "being an outsider" is a big help.
"Because I'm ignorant of so many things, I find it easy to collaborate with people who can teach me," she says. Her openness to new ideas comes in handy in the world of design. She thinks designers benefit from being apart, from being able to observe from the outside without prejudice.
Such a perspective leads her to enjoy working with organizations that embrace change. "I'm not very good at giving new form to old answers." Design for Ayse is a selfish process. She designs because she likes to. Though innovation is often the result of her work, it is never the goal. "Too much emphasis on innovation produces too much junk," she says. So Ayse is always asking "Why?" and "Why not?" Collaboration leads to synthesis.
Her thesis at Pratt, "The Water Room," won an ID Award for Concepts and the Design of the Future competition in Japan. She then designed a collection of office accessories with Bruce Hannah. In 1995, she designed a combination bidet and toilet for Japanese manufacturer Toto. In June 1997, she began work on the Resolve office system. |
Herman Miller Designs
RED Rocket
Office/Studio
Birsel + Seck, New York, New York
Awards/Recognition
NeoCon Overall Best of Competition Award and Most Innovative Award for Resolve System, 1999
Industrial Design Excellence Award, 1996, for Zoe Washlet
ID magazine award, 1996, for Zoe Washlet
The Chicago Museum Good Design Award, 1995, for Zoe Washlet
VIA (French Furniture Industry Syndicate) Award, 1994, for furniture
ID magazine award, 1990, for the Water Room
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