THAD FINAL

First Societies

Early indigenous societies that are still around today, maintain connection with nature and body. Western society critiqued first societies connection to nature, establishing a false dichotomy between reason and the natural world

Ochre

A type of stone that can be ground into a powder that has a red/orange color. Used by the Himba women in Namibia in southwest africa in a ritual mixed with aromatic substances. Evokes menstrual blood + the presence of the body

Relates to: local materials, sensuality

Sensuality

The presence of the body, in art and design. Related to femininity, thought to be “uncontrolled/spontaneous/etc” (western) Architecture aims to control sensuality. Historical distinction between sensuality and intellect. Indigenous architecture contains no distinction between body and building, full of life + sensuality.

Ex: Capitoline Venus 200 CE

uncontrolled sensuality, as indicated by the folds of her cloth (representing her genitals) and her apparent shame.

Form and Matter

Form and Line are nearly interchangeable as visual entities that attempt to control amorphous things (Matter). Much of architecture + design is the process of using form and line to control matter. Le Corbusier famously used form and line to control matter in architecture.

Ex:Bathroom in Villa Savoye 1928-1929

The Bauhaus

School in Germany from 1919-1930

Focused on pure space, form and matter, pinnacle of “modern” design. Emphasized space, transparency and looking through space, organization and proper placement. The school claimed to be universal and non-hierarchical, yet was organized with an inherently hierarchical system — few women were able to become architects and architecture and space was considered higher than craft or material work.

Ex: Director’s Office 11923-1924

Pure Space

Space of abstraction and neutrality - a technique of bringing the world under control through design

Ex: The “White Room”

Third World

A term used to classify subaltern countries, or countries considered “less developed”

Often paired with white saviorism misguided attempts through which western countries attempt to solve problems or create solutions/simplify and flatten the cultures etc.

Ex: LifeStraw

LifeStraw

Personal filter as a “solution” to “Third World Development” through which complications and problems arose… led to an idea “why give them clean water when they have this?” and other “solutions” that flattened and worsened the actual problem.

Beton Brut

Béton brut is architectural concrete that is left unfinished after being cast, displaying the patterns and seams imprinted on it by the formwork. Béton brut is not a material itself, but rather a way of using concrete. The term comes from French and means "raw concrete".

Assembly Building, Chandigarh, India - Le Corbusier 1955

Local Materials

Handmade school -How this project negatively affected the local community - overused local resource (bamboo) and affected local accessibility to the material

One reason that the handmade school signaled a type of ethical purity and simplification yet had negative effects on the community

How we use local materials to make projects sound

Relates to “craft” in a sense that they claim “purity” however they too have effects

Used to virtue signal and over simplify ethical purity in both craft and social and humanitarian design projects.

METI “Hand-made” School, Rudrapur, Bangladesh

Anna Heringer, Architect

From MoMA exhibition catalog, Small Change Big Change, 2011

Native Informant

A figure often included in design projects with humanitarian or problem solving goals in which the figure simplifies the community, background, and politics of the project

A group who are in a position of power using and image or a person's identity from another group that exists in an unbalanced power relationship to simplify the relationship and politics

Trope of craft, + social and humanitarian design projects

The handmade school

The Archives

records that are specifically regulated and maintained by historians connected to a community’s history and its members. These historians exist outside of archival institutions which portray communities in a way that is not representative or indicative of certain historical accounts or emotive personal experiences. Instead, these individuals allow the social and political elements within history to be expressed as it was in its original context and properly represent the community as well as give significance to the item.

An Archive of Our Own

Akea Brionne

2019

Provenance

Place of origin/earliest known history of something

Describes the origin, custody, and ownership of an item in its historical context to aid in its significance. This also assists in verifying its authentic transfer of rightful ownership; commonly the objects which lack definitive accounts of its origin are most likely a result of theft or illegitimate ownership.

Keep for Old Memoirs

Betye Saar

1976

Historic Preservation

Documenting the history of a physical site not solely determined by architecture but by recounting communal heritage, connections to race and class significance, and reimagining the culture and significance using artifacts.

International Coalition of Sites of Conscience

Founded 1999

Snowtown

once called the "slums" of Providence, but no longer exists. Despite its negative label, it was a place where people of color could run businesses and thrive without facing discrimination from wealthier white residents.

Division of Labor

separating the labor into individual tasks and assigning each person one specific task. Makes it so people require less skill to work the job, makes them easily hireable and more easily fired/replaced. Speeds up production 

Ex: wedgewood factory 

Wedgewood quote “make machines of men such as cannot err”

Model T

Ford Motor Co.

1908-1927

Detroit, MI

Chintz

Decorative cotton textile, popular and produced in india and transported to europe

Produced through labor intensive hand spinning of thread, hand weaving of cloth, etc

Dyed with elaborately made natural dyes, resist dyed with wax and hand painted

A beautiful and unique cloth, made with intensive labor

After british industrialization, could not compete with industrial textiles, and though had been a crucial part of economy, it was demolished

Chintz bed hanging, made in India for British

export, painted and dyed cotton, ca. 1725

Art Nouveau

A popular design style during the 1900s, exhibited at the Paris world's Fair. Reflected Belgium's colonial situation, as they had recently colonized the Congo and this was a reflection of their exploitation of natural resources + a sign of their colonialism. An example of this is the style of curved lines or "whiplash lines'' that mimicked the curved shape of the rubber vines from which resources were extracted.

Design object that CONTRASTS art nouveau:

W.E.B Dubois Poster’s shown at the worlds fair, as they were both displayed at the worlds fair but Dubois’ graphics aimed to destabilize/decolonize the event whereas art nouveau style further entrenched colonialist ideas and practices into the worlds fair

Data Visualization

presenting information through visual representation

Poster from The American Negro Exhibit 

W.E.B. Du Bois

1900

Taylorism

Named after Fredrick Winslow Taylor, who wrote The Principles of Scientific Management, which "Defined the system of organizing labor in the modern factory using various forms of systematization,".  Taylorism was a system of increasing productivity in labor, using things like stopwatch observation to create standard physical practices. Taylorism also established a hierarchy in the labor system (idea vs. labor/physical labor vs. management). Taylorism was incorporated greatly into the practices of labor at Ford.

Model T - Ford

Ford Employee Handbook

Streamlining

A stylistic approach created in the 1930s in which a kind of visual metaphor of speed was designed on products as a kind of decorative embellishment. Was compelling to consumers if the product was something that should be speedy (ex: volkswagen), but was also used in items that didn't move (like the Walter Dorwin Teague radio)

Universal Design

Understands access as something “invisible”, thinks the presence of disabled bodies should become invisible, so that we don’t have to think about it

The Measure of Man: Human Factors in Design

Henry Dreyfuss

1960

Radical Visibility

It doesn’t work to say the world is universally accessible, we also must highlight + celebrate individualized experiences, disabled experiences. A critique on universal design which attempts to silence individualized voices, especially those of disabled people

Sky Cubacub, Rebirth Garments and Radical Visibility Zine, 2014-