Sunday, July 18, 2010

Caitlin's sorta hammered out idea.

Okay, so I am thinking now of limiting my project to "WTF Does Organic Design Mean?" Having looked through Gabe's proposal, think she is going to touch on a lot of the ideas I had when it came to gendered spaces and objects, so I'm going to drop that ball and concentrate on this. I have often thought is was strange to hear people talk about "organic" art. It seemed like one of those catch all terms people would through out in crits without really knowing what it meant. In our readings I have found the term used by a wide variety of people and it always seems to mean something different. FLW uses the term organic and so does Robert Smithson and it seems they are talking about very different things.
I want to look at Solviva 1980 by Anna Eady. She "invented" salad mix. The building is described as "sustainable solar-dynamic bio-benign design"
I also want to look at Guimard's Paris Metro station entrances from 1899 Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water from 1939
And I am also hoping to look at some of the work made by a company called "Organic Designs." Here is an image of a custom house designed by them and inspired by FLW's Usonian homes of the 1940s. I believe this was designed in 2006.
There is also the potential to look at hand made strawbale homes built by non-professional designers. I want to look at these different designs in the context of The Pattern Language, sustainability and the cyclical nature of design.
Does anyone have any designs in mind they think might be interesting additions to this exploration?

2 comments:

  1. Well done Caitilin.(^_^)
    I wonder Caitilin if this may indeed pertain to Biomorphic design.
    Certain objects sometimes look as though they're "grown" rather than refined or machined or fabricated in some way.
    I myself am fascinated with this idea, and look forward to your investigation. I'd love to find evidence if it is indeed cyclic.

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  2. For the purposes of a three week course it might be good to limit your focus even more: to distinct building types (the family unit as opposed to the housing complex or vice versa). Or to address the rhetorical use of "organic" in writing and advertising. Just some thoughts: make it bigger than bite-sized but not too onerous a task to do in a week.

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