RCA History of Design

RCA SHOW 2009

rcahistoryofdesign — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:13:34 +0000

From 26th June to 3rd July 2009, graduating students from the History of Design MA present a ‘writer’s room’ at the RCA SHOW 2. Populated by an array of objects, papers, images and ephemera relating to students’ dissertations and experiences on the MA course, visitors are encouraged to rifle through, and inhabit, the ‘writer’s room’. All five senses are engaged to the fullest extent in order to assert the subjective lived experience of designed space. Likewise, the room is set to change over the duration of the SHOW, expressing the ways in which designed spaces are animated, transformed and subverted through occupancy. A globe of live fish, in the corner of the ‘writer’s room’ stands metonymically for the space as a whole, the constant evolution in the life of the aquarium reflecting the life of the room itself.

Beastly Encounters with Moderns: Animals, Architecture & Interiors, c.1920–1939 by Catherine Gregg

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:32:58 +0000

‘A filthy bloody swine of an animal? But what animal? An animal in the house?’ – Collette, The Cat, 1933

The significance of the animal in the 1920s and 1930s, as a metaphorical construction, a designed object, and an animate inhabitant of designed space, is the mainstay of this study. Animal beings are potent instruments in the articulation of human identities and social discourses; human-animal relationships are implicated in cultural constructions of modernity. For the design historian, however, the animal strays into new territory. Corporeally shaped by human breeders, primped and preened by human owners, animals are revealed as designed objects, yet living beings. Produced by the designed spaces they animate, animal beings perform the construction of modernity particular to those spaces, as living embodiments of fashion and luxury, for example, or as experimental bodies, articulating the reforming principles of modernist architecture. However, as living objects, animals have the capacity, and the disruptive agency, to subvert human design. Moreover, as a metaphorical construction the animal is loaded with human signification; invoked as a symbol of instinctual life, primitive desire or irrationality, the animal illuminates human states of mind, behaviour and aesthetics. Thus, animal materials and animal beings are engaged in a complex network of human cultural expression. Focussing on the animal in the modern interior, this dissertation establishes a dialogue traversing Surrealism and Modernism, ornament and utility, sentiment and science. What happened to the modern home when the animal crossed the threshold?

catherine.gregg@network.rca.ac.uk

The Reception of Japanese Prints and Printmaking in Britain, 1890s–1930s by Miya Itabashi

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:31:49 +0000

Miya’s work aims to shed a new light on the second-stage Japonisme by considering the British printmakers who adopted Japanese printmaking techniques, tools and materials in the context of the Arts and Crafts Movement, ‘Englishness’, ‘modernity’ and the general rise in interest in domestic interior from the 1890s to the 1930s.

miya.itabashi@network.rca.ac.uk

Elaboration: Artisans and Information in the Devon Parish, 1450–1550 by Donald White

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:30:25 +0000

Don’s work examines the many strands of information embodied in the ornamented woodwork of the late medieval parish churches of Devon. The design of screens, lofts, pulpits, fixed benches, etc. manifest the process through which external forces and sources of information were received, combined, and deployed in uniquely local ways.

dpwhite3@aol.com

On Living in an Old City: Bricolage as Adaptive Reuse, London 1977-85 by Miranda Zahedieh

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:29:07 +0000

‘We’ve learnt that everything in the city counts, the cars, the dead factories, the rubbish, the vulgar events, the expressive parts that go against the grain. Looking at the lot together you see how each thing brings out the strength in the next… which makes neat design a bit of a day dream.’ – Narrative Architecture Today
(NATO), 1983

miranda.zahedieh@network.rca.ac.uk

The ancien régime dies hard in England: the place of luxury in the People’s War by Neil Taylor

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:27:39 +0000

Austerity and rationing traditionally characterise the home-front during World War Two. For a rich, cosmopolitan elite, however, the war meant a different home-front, one offering a continuation of a lifestyle built on luxury in which such colourful indulgences as diamond brooches, leather gas-mask cases, couture dresses, and fine dining survived.

neil.taylor@network.rca.ac.uk

Taking Stock: Smithfield and the Butchers in Hanoverian London by Spike Sweeting

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:25:58 +0000

Taking Stock examines failed attempts to improve and reform London’s only livestock market, Smithfield in the early nineteenth century. Addressing both the aesthetics and aims of urbanism(s) in the period, and the stymieing force of the butchers’ professional practice, this dissertation attempts to nuance ‘geographies of design’, through both actor network theory and contemporary philosophy. Killing animals is a skilled job, this study hopes to explore why, and in doing so arrest what reformers tended to (dis)miss.

spike.sweeting@network.rca.ac.uk

Widening the Boundaries of the Spectacular: Constructing and Consuming the Female Gymnast and the Salome Dancer in Fin de Siècle Britain by Rachael Smith

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:24:09 +0000

Drawing upon understudied collections of circus and theatre ephemera, Rachael’s work explores the ways in which female perfomers utilised objects to cultivate alternative, often overtly erotic, performance selves before proceeding to examine the movement of sexualised images of female perfomers into the home via goods produced specifically for women and children.

rachael.smith@network.rca.ac.uk

English Holiday Camp Design, 1936–1951 by Elizabeth Bisley

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:22:14 +0000

Mid-century Britain was characterised by debate about the use of space for material means. In their designed plays between the stable and the transitory, the surface and structure, the open and the enclosed, holiday camps offer a route into these processes of physical change. Stretching between city and country, home and holiday, past and present, holiday camps speak to contemporary questions of designed nationality, designed ephemerality, or designed enclosure.

elizabeth.bisley@network.rca.ac.uk

Unity in the Arts: Exploring the Relationship between Walter Crane’s Political Philosophy, Ideals in Art and Role as an Educator by Louise Collins

rcahistoryofdesign — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:20:19 +0000

Divided into three main chapters; British Socialism in the late-nineteenth century and the growing Arts and Crafts Movement; Crane’s decorative, commercial and political art and thirdly his role as an educator, Louise’s work aims to explore the relationship between Crane’s political and artistic philosophy and the impact of his role as an educationalist.

louise.collins@network.rca.ac.uk