HISTORY
GAIA&GINO was founded in 2004 in Istanbul, Turkey. The company is named after the founder Gaye Cevikel’s nickname and her dog Gino. The mission of Gaia&Gino was to to set a model of a leading Turkish company in the field of design and creativity.
GAIA&GINO has quickly gained recognition as the first international Turkish brand in the design scene, collaborating with reputable designers and asking them to incorporate Turkish cultural elements into innovative objects. The collaborations with Karim Rashid, Arik Levy, Andrée Putman, Christian Ghion, Constantin Boym, Defne Koz, Jaime Hayon, Emir Uras, Sebastian Bergne, Harry Allen and David Adjaye brought out collections combining contemporary design with Turkish sensibility.
In 2006, GAIA&GINO collaborated with acclaimed designer Yves Béhar, who was the chairperson of Industrial Design Department at California College of the Arts (CCA) and sponsored a class to create the “Gino the Dog” project. Yves Béhar led and fine tuned the project with 23 students and the selected works have been produced in limited numbers to be sold worldwide.
Designated as one of the “Best of 2005 and 2008” by TIME Magazine, GAIA&GINO products have garnered prestigious awards, notably from IDEA, Red Dot Design, Design Plus, Good Design, Interior Design BOY Award and Design Management Europe.
Then in 2009, GAIA&GINO revised its product strategy to focus only on iconic, sculptural objects and lighting, and stopped creating tabletop accessories. The same “handcraft meets with industrial design’ principle continued in the collections designed by Annette Hinterwirth, Brad Ascalon, David Rockwell, Francois Azambourg, Juergen Mayer, H., Nendo, Noé Duchaufour Lawrance and Pearson Lloyd.
By the end of 2014, GAIA&GINO products were available at more than 300 high end design and concept stores across the world. By the introduction of the rechargeable lamps in the same year, GAIA&GINO brand have started to be preferred by the international architects and designers for the hospitality projects.
While continuing to develop the rechargeable lamps, GAIA&GINO has also undertaken the art direction of the Czech glass brand, Verreum (2012-2014) and created its collections with many talented designers like Sebastian Herkner, Rony Plesyl, Arik Levy Defne Koz and Scholten Baijings.
GAIA&GINO has also acted as a creative consultant during the development and inception of Atelier Swarosvki Home (2015-2016), working directly with Nadja Swarovski and the Swarovski team.
Since the company’s mission was also to help the Turkish designers and brands to enter into the global market, the glass company Nude asked for help at the right time. GAIA&GINO has worked with Nude as their creative direction consultant from 2015 till the end of 2019. During this time, GAIA&GINO introduced designers like Joe Doucet, Inga Sempe, Philippe Malouin, Aldo Bakker, Sebastian Herkner, Defne Koz and Space Copenhagen to create collections for Nude.
Besides collaborating with the designers for its own collections, GAIA&GINO has also done co-branded projects with Karim Rashid for MoMA, Bombay Sapphire and Kayra Wines; with Defne Koz for Swissotel Istanbul and designed a lighting collection for Casa International.
In 2018, GAIA&GINO moved its headquarters from Istanbul to Lisbon with a mission to work with artisans and craftspeople in Portugal in its new collections. The brand has also set up a new sales and marketing strategy to sell only on DTC model, through its online and pop-up stores.
The GAIA&GINO story continues with new actors and new themes.. However, the only remaining values are craftsmanship and hand touch on the products through Slow Design process.
