Melek Zeynep’s Open Monuments Epitomises Democratic Public Design

Melek Zeynep Bulut’s Open Monuments, an installation conceived in rammed earth and part of London Design Festival’s public programming, was on display at the Design Museum in London.  By Almas Sadique

Following the expansive experimental expositions displayed during the 23rd edition of London Design Festival earlier this year, the organisers have now extended their public programming into December with the public installation Open Monuments. This new installation was on display from December 1 to 14, 2025 at the Design Museum. Conceived by London-based Turkish artist and designer Melek Zeynep Bulut, Open Monuments comprises modular monolithic urban objects that can be arranged in myriad ways.

“Its ever-changing form and function makes Open Monuments a site of unexpected interactions, meaningful confluence and human memory, embodying my ideal of the open city. My intention is to propose that the public realm should be a space that is living and mutable,” Melek shares. Open Monuments sits within the entrance courtyard of the Design Museum, infusing the already creative environment with a dollop of surprise and intrigue.

As the name of the installation indicates, Open Monuments appears like the truncated version of a monumental structure, now chiselled to invite people through its porous fringes. The physicality of the installation, hence, earnestly reflects Melek’s idealistic vision of an open city, albeit in a limited space.

Even as the placement of Open Monuments at the entrance of Design Museum designates it the quality of an aesthetic and experimental interlude, one can imagine the iterative attributes it can embody in disparate spaces: a bench when placed along pathways, a makeshift performance space for artists and speakers, a conference table for discussions, a site for an open exhibition, a winding platform for a flea market or perhaps even a spot for organic play and talk amongst children and adults alike.

The possibilities, in fact, are endless, and are much dependent not on how the piece is designated but, instead, on how people interact with it. In essence, the spatial installation is built to integrate with its context instead of imposing its presence.

 

Illustrating the conceptual idea behind the design of Open Monuments, Melek shares with SCALE, “In these scenes, these performative monuments turn into a staging through the participation of the visitor. There are three states in exhibitions: one is the object itself. The second is the visitor’s touch and experience of this situation. The third, and my favourite, is observing this interaction.”

Open Monuments is the third installation of an ongoing series of interactive works by Melek. The first two, namely OpenWork and Duo, were monumental installations designed to respond to the wind and the human body respectively.

The artist illustrates the thought behind this series, in a candid comment shared with SCALE, “I started this project many years ago when I asked, ‘What more can be done in art and design?’ and when I realised that the new no longer excited me. All meanings and ideas have already been created. But I wondered how it would be if, with all cult concepts, definitions, monuments and forms, I were to change their meaning while preserving their shapes; if I were to stage them and open them to the visitor by turning them into a performance space, as if I were playing with all forms and their solid definitions, like an orchestra conductor.”

While OpenWork and Duo embodied a mien that would perform in response to stimuli, Open Monuments, by contrast, is a less engineered installation designed to exemplify the power of organic interaction on a piece of art itself. Even the materiality of the installation is fairly rooted, encouraging people to slow down. The components that make up Open Monuments are crafted from soil, employing the rammed earth technique.

“The works were crafted entirely by hand in Şanlıurfa, in the very heart of Mesopotamia. You can clearly see the marks of the mallets, the gestures of the hands, and the natural variations of colour and texture within the earth — and visitors, too, will now leave their own traces by touching it,” Melek reveals.

“As an artist living between Istanbul and London, I have always felt close to the idea of bringing together collective memory and present-day techniques. There is something undeniably poetic in the rhythmic, layered process of working with earth: it becomes both a metaphor for honouring the passage of time and the building of shared memory, and a way of shaping a new language of the present through interaction,” she adds.

Melek chose rammed earth as the materiality for her installation to induce a rootedness in the design. Although rammed earth is one of the oldest building techniques, it is seldom visible in the West.

“I was curious to consider what this material might contribute to our cities today when reinterpreted through contemporary methods,” she shares.

Open Monuments is extrapolated from elemental shapes: the point, the line, the circle and the square. As illustrated by Melek, the pieces that make up the installation are conceived as performers in the city, ready to transform themselves and their roles in response to their surroundings and the mood, movement and behaviour of the users.

Tying this idea with the materiality of the installation, Melek shares, “In our culture, it is believed that the human body is formed from earth, and thus carries its own memory. To treat the material with such reverence is to acknowledge this lineage. The human body is also a vessel for infinite knowledge; the body comes and goes, yet knowledge is carried forward endlessly. All of this is what set me on my journey with this material.”

After its showcase in London, Open Monuments will travel to Istanbul for another exhibition in Turkey in 2026.

When asked about some memorable ways in which people have interacted with Open Monuments, Melek shares, “Visitors to the Design Museum have sat on the Open Monuments with friends and family as well as books and phones. I like to stop by and spot that leftover cup of coffee – it reveals to me that someone sat here and had a moment of respite.”

Open Monuments invites people to interact with it in myriad ways Credit: Mark Cocksedge

Melek’s Open Monuments, which serves as an arena for creativity, interaction and retrospection during the day and subtly lights up at night to serve as a glowing intervention in the urban landscape, exemplifies the potential that interactive and inclusive public installations have in enlivening the city, making it more livable and safer.

Main Image Credit: Mark Cocksedge