RELATED TERMS: Bauhaus; An important reference point for the modern movement was the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the ‘total work of art’. This concept, though it plays a key role in the theory and practice of modernist avant-gardes, is notoriously difficult to define. In broad outline, it suggests both the blurring of boundaries between artContinue reading “Gesamtkunstwerk”
Author Archives: aparsons474
Bauhaus
RELATED TERMS: Hochschule für Gestaltung; Black Mountain College; Gesamtkunstwerk The Bauhaus, a revolutionary art and design school, opened in 1919 under the architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969). He remained director until 1928. In all, there were three directors of the Bauhaus, all of them architects. After Gropius, Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) held the directorship between 1928 and 1930Continue reading “Bauhaus”
Visual Arts and Visual Media
RELATED TERMS: Mode and medium; The proper goal of sculpture and of all the visual arts, it might have been held at one time in the past, is the depiction of physical beauty. However, this universalistic horizon, as well as the horizon of critics and philosophers of the Enlightenment, are rendered problematic by the opacityContinue reading “Visual Arts and Visual Media”
Utopia and Utopian Thinking
RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Modernism; Design practice and functionalism Sir Thomas More published his Utopia in 1516 . The word ‘utopia’ combines two Greek roots, ou- meaning ‘no’ and topos meaning ‘place’, hence literally utopia is a no-place, a non-existent place or nowhere. However, embedded within the word utopia is a pun. The near-identical Greek word eu-topos means a ‘good place’. In creatingContinue reading “Utopia and Utopian Thinking”
Urban Design
RELATED TERMS: Architecture; Closely related to urban planning, urban design is an aspect of urban or suburban planning that focuses on creating a desirable environment in which to live, work and play. Design analysis includes the relationship between buildings, streets, land use, open space, circulation, height, natural features and human activity. A well designed urbanContinue reading “Urban Design”
Unreliable Narrator
RELATED TERMS: “We constantly re-write our own biographies and continually give matters new meanings. To rewrite history in this sense – indeed, in an Orwellian sense – is not at all inhuman. On the contrary, it is very human.” Milan Kundera, cited in McEwan, I. (1984) An Interview with Milan Kundera. Granta, 11, 34-35. SomeContinue reading “Unreliable Narrator”
Transmedia, Cross-Platform and Multimedia
RELATED TERMS: Affordances; Mode and Medium ” … stories and their worlds are crucially shaped by the affordances and limitations of the media in which they are realized.” (Ryan and Thon, 2014: 2) Design practices are often nowadays considered to be a transmedia practice, taking advantage of the affordances offered by different media, from architectural,Continue reading “Transmedia, Cross-Platform and Multimedia”
Time
RELATED TERMS: Place, Space, Placiality and Spatiality From the perspective of design practices which incorporate thinking about the temporality of the design, the discussion of the relationships among the notions of narrative, time and the human by Paul Ricoeur (1984) may be useful. Ricoeur argues that, ‘time becomes human time to the extent that itContinue reading “Time”
Threshold
RELATED TERMS: Liminality; Reception Theory and Reader Response Criticism A threshold is the entrance to a building, or sometimes a transition from one space to another. The threshold is the point at which we move from one space, state, set of ideas or view to another. Before we cross the threshold, we are outside. AfterContinue reading “Threshold”
Theoretical Practice
RELATED TERMS: Actor Network Theory; Avant-Garde Movements; Cinema and Film Theory; Creative Thinking; Critical Theory; Critical Thinking; Design and Theory: Total Design; Design History; Design Practice and Functionalism; Heidegger; Interaction Design; Methodology and Method; Open Systems Theory; Postmodernism; Poststructuralism; Practice; Sculpture; Sloterdijk; World-Building It could be argued that a design, in bringing theory together withContinue reading “Theoretical Practice”
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