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.

ManTownHuman

“Good architecture need not have an ethical dimension. ‘Responsible architecture’ is safe and seldom ‘good’. ‘Good’ architecture need not be ‘responsible”
–ManTownHuman, Manifesto:Towards a New Humanism in Architecture, 2010 

This is a statement made in the Man Town Human, Manifesto. They look at how they believe that good architecture comes from not worrying about the environment around us and just design and building for us and how we want to see the world. they talk about not worrying about global warming and co2 emissions because we will be long gone before hat impacts us and let other generations worry about the future.

Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of audacious temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of steel, glass, cardboard, textile fibre, and of all those substitutes for wood, stone and brick that enable us to obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;
Every generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism

I think the last sentence is really beautiful. Each generation will have a new idea or movement to progress architecture. Our generation now wants to look at green design and how we can have a sustainably future. Unlike in the Man Town Human Manifesto where the are really forceful about not worrying about the impact we are having on the environment, I believe that they don’t really feel this way about the environment. I believe that our generation now is the way forward to looking at better more green architecture.

“Developing a city that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” [brundtland report “our common future”, united nations wced, 1987]

“The time has come to break free from building identity, community and stability— and get on with building.”

Planning The City

Urbanism:Urbanism is the study of the characteristic ways of interaction of inhabitants of towns and cities (urban areas) with the built environment.

Principles of Intelligent Urbanism:

Principle one: a balance with nature – The idea of looking how architecture and grow with the surrounding nature. A great example of this is Falling Water. the summer home looks as if it grew with the plants and trees around it.

Principle two: a balance with tradition – We also need to consider the idea of what a traditional looking home looks like not trying to change it into something completely different.

Principle three: appropriate technology – We need to consider the idea of using new technologies but not over doing this and having unnecessary technology that doesn’t benefit us or even the environment.

Principle four: conviviality – We need to consider how friendly the building is to people and to the environment. How these building make people feel if they are daunting or welcoming.

Principle five: efficiency – The idea of how energy efficient the building is and how that impact the world around us. How the buildings resources are used and if this can be improved or changed.

Principle six: human scale – Looking at how the building needs to be made looking at the human scale and proportion so that any person of any shape or size are accommodated to that building

Principle seven: opportunity matrix – Looking at how over time that this will have a different social or political difference.

Principle eight: regional integration

Principle nine: balanced movement

Principle ten: institutional integrity

The Neo-Futurist Manifesto Bio-mimicry

Biomimicry – the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes.

Using advanced technologies to provide the city with user- oriented infrastructure, humanitarian social services, adequate healthcare, safety provided peace – of – mind and sensitive urban governance.

Designing a city that embraces biomimicry, through nature- inspired `’free, sensual curves. the curves of the sinuous course of rivers, of the clouds in the sky, of human body– because the universe is entirely made of curves and right angles and straight lines were created by men with ruler and square” (Oscar Niemeyer)

Biomorphic – resembling or suggesting the forms of living organisms.

Things We Have Invented By Looking At Nature

Geckos

We all know about Gecko’s and how they can stick and sty to just about anything. You see them in the craziest of places sometimes. This idea of the stickiness of the Gecko’s feet has since inspired research into making and developing an advanced adhesive. Since this research begun there are now products that hold this incredible stickiness.

Sharks

In recent years there has been studies into the skin of sharks and could be the key to fighting disease. A lab in ……. is trying to use the skin of sharks to save humans. There is a company called Sharklets has invented a man made material . Shark skin repels deadly bacteria and this man made material does the same. They have used textures like on the skin of a shark to help control bacteria on surfaces. The company haven’t used any chemicals and no antibiotics and no heavy metals, they have just used the shape of the surface which the bacteria doesn’t like. The idea came from Anthony Brennan a professor of engineering at The University of Florida.

 

The Neo-Futurist Manifesto – Sustainability and Environmentalism

Sustainability and Environmentalism: The Same Thing?

Sustainability – The idea to maintain at a certain level or rate. For example having a building that is sustainable they try to decrease the negative environmental impact that a building has. Things like the materials that they may use and energy. The idea is to think about our actions and how they can and will affect future generations to come

Environmentalism – The concern about and action aimed at protecting the environment. Making improvements to the health of the environment from the damage that we have caused.  Environmentalism focuses mainly on the environmental and nature related aspects.

The two are very similar they both want the same outcome. They want to be able to decrease the impact we have on the environment. The main difference between the two is that sustainability is trying to maintain, where as environmental want to make a difference and try help benefit the environment rather than to just maintain it.

    Environmental Timeline

1798 – Thomas Robert Malthus publishes An Essay on the    Principle of Population,

1931 – Grey Owl publishes “The Men from the Last Frontier”

1956 – Peak Oil first predicted

1962 – Rachel Carson publishes “Silent Spring”.

1971 – Greenpeace founded in Vancouver, Canada

1972 – The Blue Marble Photograph

1974 – CFCs are first hypothesized to cause ozone thinning

1984 – Bhopal disaster in Madhya Pradesh

1986 – Chernobyl, world’s worst nuclear power accident

1987 – The Report of the Brundtland Commission

1988 – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change   (IPCC) was established

1989 – Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the   ozone layer entered into force on January 1.

1992 – The Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro

1994 – The first genetically modified food crop released to    the market.

1997 – The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto,

2002 – Earth Summit, held in Johannesburg

2003 – The Kyoto Protocol came into force

2006 – Former U.S. vice president Al Gore releases An         Inconvenient Truth, a documentary that describes            global warming.

Kyoto Protocol

An international treaty which commits those countries signed up to it to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. In most cases countries are given a target reduction based on their 1990 GHG emission rates. There are currently 192 countries signed up. Some countries are achieving excellent reductions, but emissions are increasing in others.

What features would you expect to find in a sustainable city?

Energy – reducing carbon emissions using alternative methods of fuels such and wind, water and solar.
Making buildings more cheaper to run.
Making streets fit for people
Rethinking waste and what and how we are disposing of it. Looking at recycling and what can be reused for another purpose.
Moderating the heat island.
Making green spaces work for people and wildlife.

Archigram

Archigram is a form of architectural magazine in which it’s 6 founders looked at technology for it’s inspiration. Taking the most outrageous ideas and putting them to paper. The idea of having walking cities and other things such as this. Things that some of us may not even see as possible. The final Archigram group was made up of David Greene, Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Mike Webb, Ron Herron and Dennis Crompton. This group was a UK based group starting in the 1960s. the group wanted to look at urban design and haw they could find a dramatic alternative as the group found urban design boring and dull.
All six would draw and sketch many ideas down, many  did not see there full potential. That when the would publish their design in the magazine as they were free to explore outrageous ideas. As I said before the group were inspired by technocratic ideas as well as the American Beat movement and Pop art.

What aspects of Archigram’s designs have actually come into being?

Is it important to ‘think outside the box’ in design?
I believe it it’s a massive aspect with in design to be thinking outside of the box. If we didn’t we would all have the same outcomes or if not similar. I think thinking outside the box is more than just having a different idea but being brave enough to think the impossible and make it possible. Within my past work I wanted to hot glue balloons an many of my fellow students told me this would be impossible as it would pop the balloon. I chose not to listen and to everyone and continued with my idea not only did the balloons not pop, I made them into lights that had beautiful forms aswell.

So what actually is a city?
I believe that a city is a large piece of land that over time has been build up with lots of different architecture, that has lots of different purposes be that what it was originally designed for or something new. That attracts people from surrounding towns and villages or people further away to come and enjoy. Within cities you will always find big statement architecture that stands out. Places like little towns don’t have these statement buildings.

So what actually is architecture?
Architecture can be anything you wish it to be. Its thinking outside of the box. Architecture is a art in which you design and construct buildings. Be that they are outrageous or not. Architecture can be the public toilets you see in the park to the Tate in London.

 The golden Radio 

Architecture is a thing of art, a phenomenon of the emotions, lying outside questions of construction and beyond them.
The purpose of construction is to make things hold together; of architecture to move us.
The business of architecture is to establish emotional relationships by means of raw materials.

    Mass production 

‘Will the yard soon be a factory? There is talk of houses made in a mould by pouring in liquid concrete from above, completed in one day as you would fill a bottle.’

I watched this video in which a Chinese company speak about using a giant 3D printer to build homes. They have a printer that is 22ft, tall 30ft wide, 490ft long printer is able to print at least 10 homes a day.  This printer has been in development for12 years. The ink used to make the house is a mixture of special cement and glass fibre. I believe that the world and technology has become very fast moving and is remarkable what is possible now. I do not agree with this. The idea of creating and designing a building has all the art taken out of this. they will all be standard buildings, no individuality. I don’t believe this is a move forward for architecture as much as I believe it is for technology.

Neo- Futurism

The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs, arguing up to the last confines of logic and blackening many reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling. An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments. Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls. Suddenly we jumped, hearing the mighty noise of the huge double-decker trams that rumbled by outside, ablaze with coloured lights, like villages on holiday suddenly struck and uprooted by the flooding Po and dragged over falls and through gorges to the sea. Then the silence deepened. But, as we listened to the old canal muttering its feeble prayers and the creaking bones of sickly palaces above their damp green beards, under the windows we suddenly heard the famished roar of automobiles.

Every generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism …..

I really liked this little snippet from the proclaim. Each generation will build there own city to which they see to be there for generations to come, each thinking they have achieved the futurism in their generation and generations to come when realistically there is another generations of young architects with the same dreams and new ideas. Design moves so fast that we never have enough time to really appreciate the current design before a new design has arrived and the next.

What do you make of Sant’Elia’s view that the decorative must be abolished?

I feel that there are points I agree with on both parts. I think that decoration is a massive part of being an artist or a designer in nine times out of ten. We are artist or designers want to create something beautiful for others to enjoy and look at wether it be clothing, a painting or a building. We find satisfaction in people enjoying something we’ve worked so hard to design and make. I feel that now we focus to much on the decorative side of architecture that we forget that these buildings will not have the same materials and structure of that of building 50 years ago. There needs to be a balance between the structure and decorative design of an architectural building.

Is it unacceptable to borrow from the past, or is it in fact inevitable?

It is inevitable to happen because we learn and improve from the past. We as designers and artists look for inspiration from other designers and artist and if someone was only made yesterday that is technically in the past. In the lecture we looked at this photo of a 1950s beetle compared to the new 2011 beetle. There is no possible way really that you could improve on a car not looking at the previous one. In my mind it is’t possible. If it was me I would need to look back on what I had failed on and worked to improve this next time and look at the style of the car, the shape and how i could improve this by also looking at the cars that are around now. Then coming up with an idea in which the car has moved forward fro the previous but making it better by picking up and what the previous model lacked

Is nostalgia appropriate in art and design?

I think this is a similar answer to the previous topic in which we discussed. It is important as we would never really be able to move forward without improving from the past. I do believe though the amount of nostalgia within different areas of art and design does vary. I feel within my practise I don’t particularly look back into the past. I’m a maker and I love to make and experiment with different materials and techniques. I do look into artist that are similar to my work which do give off good ideas to maybe develop my area of art and design but I wouldn’t consider trying to improve the work of any other artist or designer. The one thing we all do as designer and artist is look back on our own work and see how we can develop that. Depending on if it was something we worked on 3 years ago or a project we are working on now. All in all I do believe that nostalgia is important and I don’t think my artist or designer couldn’t be nostalgic and look into the past to get inspiration.

What is pastiche? Is it something to be avoided?

Definition from google: An artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.

Reflecting on how an understanding of the birth of the industrial and economic paradigm is important in my own practise?

As a maker and also a textiles student the birth of the industrial and economic paradigm was a massive impact to the textiles industry. John Kays created the wheeled shuttle in 1733, which meant that weavers were now doubling their productivity than doing this by hand. This creation was the beginning on the textiles industrial revolution. Now today we have sewing machine that run from electricity rather than doing so by hand. This increased productivity and most textiles products can be massed produced now where as before the industrial  revolution doing so by hand would of took hours, days, weeks and even months to create a large batch of the same product. With new technology being created every year, this is making it possible to create my work at a faster rate. This has a massive impact on my work as now I can stitch together a piece of fabric within minutes where as before the revolution I might of spend our hand stitching to create the same high quality sustainable stitch. Having the technology we have now because of the revolution means that there is new and exciting products being created everyday. With the economy moving as faster than ever there is always going to be a demand for new products. Creating new ideas as your last idea is being produced. With my practice I love testing materials to their limit and having all this wonderful technology around me I am able to do this. For example the hot glue gun. I tested the limit of a balloon by adding hot glue onto the balloon which created these beautiful forms that I fell in love with. This would never been possible if it wasn’t for the fast moving revolution. Even so we are still moving forward and creating. Finding new ways to move forward. As will my practice.