London Project -- Rainbow in London

London Project -- Rainbow in London

Theme:
Intersections & Crosswalks
1. Change the surface of roads in some complex crossing such as circus.
2. Redesign the crosswalk.

Background:
Intersections
For maintain the old layout, streets and roads are many, complex and
irregular.

Crosswalks
1. Caution -- Drivers slow down and avoid the walking person.
2. Restrict -- Walking people should cross the street in the particular area.
3. Remind -- People should look right or left before they cross the street.

Present situation:
Intersections
1. Different styles that link three to seven streets.
2. Difficult to find the way which the people want to go
(Difficult to match the orientation with map.)
(Difficult to guide the way to others.)

Crosswalks
1. Weak -- Not conspicuous.
(Using dotted lines. “----------”)
(Don’t have distinctions with the road.)
2. Useless -- Not direct.
(Using words. -- “look right”/ “look left”.)

Project:
Intersections
1. Change the surface of intersections in a circle area.
(Use colors to distinguish each street. -- printing or different color
stones)
2. Redesign the map in the same areas with the corresponding colors.

Crosswalks
1. Use colors to define the area of crosswalks.
(printing or different color stones.)
2. Use directional images to remind people to look right or left
(printing or different color stones.)

Draft 1 of Essay Plan

Draft 1 of Essay Plan

Title: “The different between art and design lie not so much in how they look

as in what they do.”(Brady, 1998) How far do you agree with this

statement?

Approach: Since the comprehensive application of new medium and technology in the

modern art, a part of art works and design are similar in their forms.
Besides, artists and designers occasionally switch their status, which
makes increasing people tend to confuse art and design. Against the
condition, Brady made a clear distinction between art and design through
“what they do” that contains “purpose”, “how they work”, “making
judgment”, “the audience”, and “materials” rather than “how they look”
that is the form.

Introduction: Art and design have the different way to realize their value. Beside
their own value such as artistic quality of art or practicality of design and
cultural communication, they take different responsibility on development
of society and human to achieve more realistic and profound value.

Thesis Statement: I agree with this statement basically as the five
aspects can distinguish art from design in works themselves. But,
essentially, the social Responsibility is the fundamental difference between
art and design.

Paragraph 1 Main Idea: -- Social Responsibility of Art. (In psychological way)

Evidence: -- Art reflect the social problems by the contagious works,
which arouse people to speculate on them and their solutions.
Furthermore, Art spirit people up against the adverse situation such as
disaster, war, disease and so on.

Sources: -- Picture This: Caring for the Earth - a photo contest
organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
http://www.undp.org/picturethis2009/

Paragraph 2 Main Idea: -- Social Responsibility of design. (In material way)

Evidence: -- Design not only improves the quality of human’s daily life,
but also advocates people to living in a “green” style, which benefits
conserving environment and resource.

Sources: -- “Design for the real world”—Victor Papanek

Conclusion Agree “what they do” is more important than “how they look” to
distinguish between art and design, but social Responsibility is the
fundamental difference. Because art and design play different roles in
affecting society and human.

2010-07-22

Summary Of “Good Design In The Digital Age”

Richard Buchnan delivered his opinion of “what is good design” in his article titled “Good Design In The Digital Age” that was included in Gain: AIGA Journal of Design for Network Economy,Volume 1, number 1 in 2000.

To begin with, for a general problem that a significant number of products fail to meet the needs of users, Buchanan put forward that a practical framework should be used to judge the quality the products in digital age.

What’s more, Buchanan compared the attention of good products quality in the past with that in nowadays and summed the present quality of good products up in three main points that are useful, usable and desirable.
(Between 1949 and 1955, the “Good Design” program promoted the criteria of good products considering the user’s perception and professional design, but its selection was narrow and ignored many other good products representing technological change. In the whole 20th century, the “good design” focused on form and function in isolation from its use in spited of its context in the user’s daily life. Today, designers explore “user experience” and products’ content.)

Moreover, Buchanan analyzed three central qualities of good design and how to build trust between products and users in three tasks respectively.
(Firstly, since content and purpose are the initial elements for selection of products, designers have to create a useful product that has the content with intellectual efficiency and clarity.
Secondly, usability offer user a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction, so designers should bring grace, elegance and marvel into form and device, which enable products to be more deeply usable.
Thirdly, desirability plays an important and often decisive role in product selection, so designers need to add a “voice” of products to attract users and work with marketing experts to improve branding strategies. )

Last but not least, Buchanan emphasized the final step is discovering the balance of all three qualities mentioned above for products and users, which is a strategic design, and applying them into every individual case for seeking good design.

The First Impression of London

When the aircraft flew over London, on a Sunday morning of brilliant sunshine, I was viewing the legendary of capital of fog from the air to find the famous buildings that I saw in books and TV before.

The glittery River Thames offers me an excellent orientation, and I try to match the sight with the map of London in my memory. However, I got lost as the plane circle a bit until I spot “The Swiss Re Tower”, widely known as “The Gherkin”. It seems really prominent in the mass of low masonry building for its distinctive shape and glass curtain wall which looks like crystal. Compared with a similar building in China designed by OMA that is “China Central Television Office Building” called expensive “Big Shorts” sardonically by the natives, “The Gherkin” designed by Foster cares about protecting the environment and saving energy more. Its shape and the spiral lines in the surface are closely contacted with not only the energy-efficient systems of whole building, but also its structure.

Walking through the town, the pervasive masonry buildings and irregular road forks surround me like a huge maze, and I always lose mu bearing. When I attempt to identify the road through finding the characters of buildings, the multifarious details confuses me more. There are lines and Angles, various column types and intricate decoration everywhere and I nearly cannot recognize which styles they belong to even though I am an architect, which makes me so sad. I think I have to relearn European architecture styles and history according to the living classical architecture of London.

Digression about “The Surrealism House”

These days we are discussing about the art works of “The Surrealism House” in our classes and I find an interesting thing that the people’s different reflections for these works reflect their different personality, which enable me to know more about their natural characters.

At the same time, I feel how dispassionate I am because I have not felt exciting, fascinated, terrified or uncomfortable, but pay more attention to the creation themselves such as the implication, background, materials, and even technique as well as to find a clue to link up all of works and logic to explain the relationship among them. When walking around the exhibition, I did not feel as a voyeur, probably more like a detective.

If we have noticed the each theme of rooms when we were viewing the works, and if we review the whole themes in sequence after viewing, we can find the intentional arrangement of the exhibition designer, Carmody Groarke, who try to narrate a long story about a surreal house to us. After pressing a “bell”, we enter into “the Freud house”, the place where is the dream begin from, which makes us to think “who I am”. In order to find the answer, we traverse “femme”, “panic”, “haunted” and “electric” rooms one by one until climbing up to the second floor and turning into real that offers us the feeling of “vertigo”. We still can’t find the answer and are puzzled about “presence” and “absence”, which arouses us original memory in “mother” abdomen and desire of “love”. And then we attempt to live in confinement like a “bird”. Finally, even if “concrete” gives a change to the house, it still cannot be escaped from the “blasted” destiny and we only can choose “sacrifice”.

My opinion hasn't been well thought out and is only for the reflective writing that helps me to record my each idea.

Finally，I would like to say that the buildings of Barbican Center fascinated me so much for their brutalism, which makes me think of my favorite architect, Oscar Niemeyer, who is good at constructing unconstrained and beautiful buildings with concrete. I really love concrete!

: )

“The Surreal House”

“The Surreal House” planned by Carmody Groarke, is being shown in Barbican Art Gallery between 10 June and 12 September, which explores the relevance of dreams and desires for houses as well as their importance with different artistic forms such as paintings, films, photographs, installations and architecture models. The exhibition concentrates the works of first generation surrealists (Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti and Rene Magritte), contemporary artists (Louise Bourgeois, Sarah Lucas), film-makers (Maya Deren, Jean Cocteau, Andrei Tarkovsky and Jan Svankmajer) and architects (Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas).

The over 150 extraordinary works reflect the comprehension of surrealists who have attempted to integrate the reality with the Subconscious and the experience of dreams in houses. For surrealists, house is “our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the world” (Bachelard, 1958), which totally has subverted the definition of those in modernism that the house is “a machine for living in” (Le Corbusier, 1923).

The exhibition has been laid out on two levels, which likes a big house concluding all functions of living. On the lower lever, visitors would continuously traverse a series of mysterious rooms those have their own themes, which inspires them with imagination of domestic interior space and subconscious desire about habitation. These Works is describing various dreams for visitors by objects, images and voices to prove the relevance of dreams and human appetence because “Only when people are sleeping, dreams can help you make it realize. As a result, the interpretation of dreams is the best way to interpret people’s subconsciousness.” (Freud, 1900).The upper lever is displaying the dialogue between surreal art and architecture, which is the main purpose of the exhibition that arouses the thought about how house can become human’s stage for living in. Or, perhaps the house is the “theatre of the domestic” and a real place where the human or their spirit live in.

It is worth mentioning that the exhibition has been opened with “Priere de toucher”, 1947, by Marcel Duchamp(1887-1968) that is a nipple resembled a doorbell and ended in the last film of Russian film-maker Anderei Tarkovsky(1932-1986) before he died, “The Sacrifice”,1986. In this film, the protagonist lighted his house that signified everything he holds dear, which impresses visitors as being solemn and stirring; besides, it expresses the film-maker’s deep trepidation for human.

Graduation Design Show

For a student majoring art and design, it is practically that the graduation design is the most important project in all of the school terms. In my university, the students spend large number of time in improving their works in order to make them tending toward perfection. They have to complete all of their works before the graduation design show opening, and show the process of their design in the exhibition, including the sketch of prime ideas and the finally finished works; in addition, they need to find a proper way of display that enable the viewers to understand the designer’s ideas easily and deeply. So, for a perfect show, students and their tutors almost take four months at least in their graduation design. It is a huge challenge of physical strength and spirit, or we can say it is a double suffering. Nonetheless, we enjoy the process.

Last week, the students of LCC laid out their graduation design on display in the hall of LCC and I found a strange thing that some students did their design on the exhibition site, which was so different from my conception for the graduation design. I did not know why they did not finish their works in the studios before moving them in the exhibition hall and was worried about whether they can complete them before the show opening, but the result indicated that they can do it. After seeing the BA graduation design show, I have felt that most of works are terse, humorous and light-hearted. By contrast, the works of Chinese students are more complex in the theme, contents, even using of new techniques.

It is just a plain feeling about the show in LCC, and I would like to visit the graduation design show in AA and UCL which are the powerful colleges in architecture next day. It is said that both of the works styles and the education conception are totally different between the two colleges, which makes me feel so expectant.

; )