PDP

Over the past year in university I have been in two constellations classes that I chose to be involved in. This involved going into lectures each week for a number of weeks discussing certain aspects of design. For my two constellation classes I chose sustainable practice and neo – futuristic architecture. Both of these I became very interested in when the lecturers go up to talk about what we would be learning about in their lectures.

Sustainable practise was the first constellation group I went to. In these lecture we looked at a number of different things over the course of 8 weeks. We looked at the industrial revolution and how that when this happened there was a massive move forward in the industry and how quickly we began using fossil fuels like coal and burning this to create electricity. The economic growth was rapidly increasing as well which if we carry on at the rate that we are going we will need more than just the one planet to keep up with the growth. Once we had looked at the problem of our fast growing industry we began looking at sustainability. How we can sustain the industry and the economical growth. Looking at how we can reduce the burning of fossil fuels and damaging the earth. We looked at ideas of how we can help this by looking at solar panels and wind turbines to help produce power rather than using coal and other harmful methods. We also compared different products such as a tv and how that looked in the 1950s to how they look now and how fast developing the industry has become.
In my past studies there has always been this acknowledgement of how we are affecting the earth and how being more sustainable can help reduce this.  In my current work, working in textiles I try to sustain the amount of fabric I would be using making sure I got the most out of fabrics. Placing my patterns close to the edge rather than in the middle of the fabric. As the production of this material would be damaging to the earth and wasting fabric by not being responsible with fabrics and not being sustainable will have an impact. I have been creating lights using dissolvable stitch and i think what I would like to do differently would be to make sure I’m not wasting any cotton. I found myself unravelling cotton from bobbins as I wanted to change the colour rather than finding an empty one.

The second constellation group I chose was neo futurist architecture. I really enjoyed these lectures a lot more than I expected. Throughout the lectures we looked at lots of different manifestos from different architects. In our first lecture we spoke about can we borrow things from the past to create something new or develop something from the past. I had a strong opinion that we can as how are we ever meant to move forward and make the past better if we don’t look at the flaws of past inventions. Such as cars imagine there being a completely new car being made every few years and never developing any of the ones that have already been designed and made we would never learn and progress we would just be stuck. As the lectures went on I became increasing more interested in the idea of ecological and green architecture and this idea of having green building that benefit the earth rather than destroying it.  We looked at a quote from ManTownHuman “Good architecture need not have an ethical dimension. ‘Responsible architecture’ is safe and seldom ‘good’. ‘Good’ architecture need not be ‘responsible”. In this manifesto he talks a lot about not worrying about the planet and design for now rather than worrying about the impact we have on the environment, as future generations can deal with the conciseness. I don’t believe this is what they really believe in, I feel he’s doing this to make a statement so people look at the views he has.
This didn’t make me do anything differently as such. I have always made sure that for  my field work when working with the hot glue gun I have always turned it off to save electricity. I also did this so I wasn’t wasting the glue because if you leave the glue it al begins to melt and to a certain extent i can use the glue but if it melt too much it doesn’t have the same form. Also with my subject work when using the sewing machine I have made sure that I have turned the sewing machine off. I haven’t done much in my work of being green but in the future I want to look at green ways of doing my work how I could change a material that is more environmentally friendly. This has changed my view on being environmentally friendly as I now know that you can create something beautiful without impacting the environment. I want to look in the future at older building that may not be as environmentally friendly and make models of how I would change them in slight ways to make them more environmentally friendly without having to knock the building down and build it from scratch. I feel that neo futurist architecture has made me realise that I am interested in architecture more so the idea of resorting old derelict buildings. How they could be changed to be more environmentally friendly.

Overall I have really enjoy my second choice in constellation and believe this has changed my way of thinking for my future projects and has had an impact on what sort of designer/ artist that I want to be.