Şebnem Kayhan (b. 1989)
Interdisciplinary Artist, Designer, Urban Designer, and Educator

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Şebnem Kayhan is an Amasra-born, Istanbul-based interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator. Her professional journey began in city planning and urban design and gradually evolved into a multi-layered practice spanning architecture, graphic design, visual communication, art direction, brand management, artistic production, and education. Today, rather than treating these as separate fields, she works through the relationships between cities, spaces, people, stories, and visual language.

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Education and the Beginnings of Her Urban Design Practice

Kayhan studied City and Regional Planning at the Faculty of Architecture of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. From her undergraduate years onward, she developed an approach to understanding cities through field observation as well as desk-based research. Her early work focused on public space, urban identity, everyday life, human movement, and spatial relationships.

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In 2010, she participated in the Balıkesir Rural Settlement Pattern Analysis, examining the relationship between local settlement patterns, regional architectural characteristics, and the rural environment.

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That same year, she joined the StreetIstanbul Workshop, organized through a collaboration between Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam). Through this international workshop, she explored the role of the street in urban life and compared traditional and modern approaches to everyday street use in Istanbul.

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In 2011, she participated in ECOWEEK – Urban Communities & Green Architecture in Thessaloniki. As part of the international conference and interdisciplinary design workshop, she developed proposals for the historic surroundings of the Rotunda, focusing on sustainable landscape design, green infrastructure, the quality of public open spaces, and pedestrian and bicycle mobility. This experience strengthened her understanding of how contemporary needs and ecological design principles can be integrated within a sensitive historic setting.

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Professional Experience in Architecture and Urban Design

Between 2012 and 2017, Kayhan worked as an urban designer at Zafer Akay Architecture. She contributed to urban analysis, architectural concept development, visualization, and project presentation processes. Working across planning, architecture, and visual representation enabled her to transform spatial information at different scales into clear design decisions.

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Her work during this period included the Kuşdili Valley Urban Design Competition, studies for the Kılıç Ali Paşa Mosque precinct, planning studies in Ağva, and various architectural and urban design projects.

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For the 2013 Kuşdili Valley Urban Design Competition, she worked on strengthening the connection between the Kadıköy waterfront and Söğütlüçeşme by integrating pedestrian routes, green corridors, public open spaces, and public transportation systems. The proposal also addressed the adaptive reuse of historic buildings, the rehabilitation of Kurbağalıdere, and the reconnection of fragmented parts of the urban fabric.

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In 2014, she participated in Urban Design for Stuttgart: A Vision for Stuttgart’s Future, developed through a collaboration between Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Karadeniz Technical University, and Stuttgart Technical University. She worked on future urban development scenarios for Stuttgart, focusing on open-space systems, mobility networks, public-space use, and environmental sustainability. This international inter-university project strengthened her ability to think strategically across different urban contexts and develop proposals at the masterplan scale.

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From Urban Research to Visual Communication

In 2014, Kayhan worked on an international cultural promotion project spanning 15 countries and 28 cities. She researched the character, cultural layers, visitor destinations, and walkable routes of different cities to develop a series of city guides.

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Drawing on her background in city planning and spatial analysis, she structured the content and route systems of the guides. Through graphic design, she translated this information into clear maps, editorial layouts, and visual hierarchies. This became one of the first significant professional projects in which urban thinking and graphic design came together within her practice.

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Between 2014 and 2019, Kayhan completed her master’s degree in Urban Design at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. From 2016 to 2017, she studied city planning and urban design at Sapienza University of Rome.

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Her master’s thesis, Spatial Perception and Walkability, focused on the Trastevere district of Rome. The research examined what people notice while walking through a city, where they slow down, which visual cues help them navigate, and how they form emotional and spatial connections with a place.

Rather than relying solely on maps and written sources, she conducted the research by walking through the streets of Trastevere, observing everyday life, and producing on-site sketches. Thresholds, routes, façade rhythms, human scale, and the traces of daily life became central elements of the study. Drawing functioned not simply as an aesthetic outcome, but as a method for understanding, recording, and testing the relationships she observed in the field.

In 2016, she participated in the International Applied Training in Ravenna, Italy. The program focused on the conservation and reconstruction of a section of Ravenna’s ancient city walls and included architectural conservation training, field studies of Ravenna’s UNESCO World Heritage sites, and applied project work conducted in collaboration with students from the University of Bologna.

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Graphic Design and Art Direction

Following her experience in urban design, Kayhan worked in international project coordination and trade fair organization. Managing communication between teams, clients, manufacturers, and implementation partners helped her understand design as a process that extends beyond concept development to include planning, coordination, production, and delivery.

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Between 2017 and 2020, she worked in graphic design and brand relations at WON Agency. She contributed to visual identity, communication design, event, and spatial design projects, developing two- and three-dimensional brand applications, presentations, and communication materials. This period marked an important transition in which she began directly combining her urban design background with professional graphic design, brand communication, and implementation processes.

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Between 2020 and 2026, Kayhan served as Co-Founder and Art Director of RunArte Creative Agency, leading the agency’s creative and operational processes. She developed projects across brand strategy, corporate identity, campaign language, catalogue and editorial design, presentation systems, packaging, digital communication, environmental graphics, wayfinding, exhibition stands, and spatial brand experiences.

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Her responsibilities extended across the entire creative process, from interpreting briefs and developing concepts to establishing visual systems, coordinating clients and teams, managing budgets and schedules, and overseeing implementation and final delivery.

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She has worked on projects for national and international brands across a wide range of sectors, including Adidas, Reebok, Philip Morris, BOCCHI USA, Packpeer, Mars Sigorta, Mars Logistics, UNIDECO, NanoLab, GISAGIS/Hereklia, Pernod Ricard, Pegasus, Vodafone, and Arçelik.

Her selected work includes in-store experience areas and portable display systems for Reebok Zig Kinetica; catalogue and editorial systems for BOCCHI USA’s US market; corporate identity, trade fair communication, and environmental graphics for UNIDECO; a comprehensive rebranding process for Mars Sigorta; and packaging and illustration systems for GISAGIS. She also led the creative direction of the award-winning B2B platform Packpeer, developing its brand identity, digital product language, investor presentations, and visual communication system.

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Teaching and “Drawing as a Way of Seeing”

Since 2020, Kayhan has worked as a part-time instructor at Istanbul Technical University’s Faculty of Architecture, where she teaches the Drawing in Architecture course. In her teaching practice, drawing is not treated merely as a technical form of representation, but as a method of observation, spatial understanding, and making thought visible. She works with students on scale, movement, void, structure, atmosphere, and the relationship between people and space, using urban sketching as part of architectural education.

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Her thesis research and teaching practice at ITU gradually developed into the Drawing as a Way of Seeing – Çizgi ile Bak methodology. Within this approach, line and watercolor are not tools for quickly reproducing a place; they are ways of observing it carefully, recording its atmosphere, and building a personal visual journal. Kayhan continues to develop this methodology through university courses, public-space studies, independent workshops, and educational programs for different age groups.

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Independent Artistic Practice

Alongside her professional design work, Kayhan maintains an independent artistic practice through Şebnem Kayhan Art Studio. Her work explores the city, the body, memory, women’s experiences, inner worlds, and the invisible connections between people through watercolor, acrylic, illustration, digital production, video, mixed media, and spatial interventions.

Eyes Open Ubuntu is one of the series to emerge from this practice.

Her work was presented in Aşk Yeniden (Love Again) at Luna Art Gallery in 2020 and in Yansıma (Reflection), organized by Karl & Ein Art Gallery at Akaretler, Istanbul, in 2021.

In 2025, she participated in Good Design İzmir, organized by İzmir Mediterranean Academy, as a selected artist and urban sketching workshop facilitator. Within this context, she revisited the works developed under Eyes Open Ubuntu through the themes of collective memory, empathy, solidarity, and connection.

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Current Research and Professional Networks

Between 2024 and 2025, Kayhan participated in the Co-Mapping the Istanbul Coastline Atlas Workshop, organized by SALT. Through mapping, field observation, and visual documentation, she investigated the multilayered structure of Istanbul’s coastline. Her work focused on making visible not only the city’s physical structure, but also its everyday uses, memories, and relationship with its inhabitants.

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Şebnem Kayhan is also a member of Urban.koop – Urban Studies Cooperative. Through Urban.koop, she engages with urban research, public space, cultural heritage, mapping, publishing, urban and cultural guides, socially oriented workshops, and interdisciplinary participatory projects.

This membership enables her to extend her long-standing work in urban research, visual storytelling, and education within a collective network of practitioners from different disciplines.

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Current Practice

Today, Kayhan lives and works in Istanbul, combining graphic design and art direction projects with independent artistic production, urban research, and education. Her practice moves between analog and digital, two- and three-dimensional, static and motion-based forms of production.

Whether developing a brand identity, mapping a city, drawing a space, or designing a workshop, she continues to pursue the same central question:

 

How do people relate to the world they see, inhabit, and move through?

This question is what connects the different areas of Şebnem Kayhan’s practice. City planning taught her to read relationships and systems; graphic design enabled her to translate complex information into a clear visual language; art gave her a way to express what remains invisible; and education allowed her to share these experiences with others.