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- Title of Abstract:
Shifting Scale: The Implications of Dimensional Variation and the Legacy of Craft (Ref #195)
- Date:
- 26-10-2006 08:47:33
- Status:
-
Unsuccessful
- Rating:
- 4
-
Details:
- In ?Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics? (1860-1863), German architect and anthropologist Gottfried Semper proposed a new way of viewing architecture that emphasised materials and the construction techniques used to combine them. In brief, he proposed that architecture and the fine arts find their motivation in the technical arts including textiles, ceramics, tectonics and stereotomy. Textile design was central to Semper?s premise, with emphasis on the weave and the enveloping surface, and as such; it was the ornamental surface, the portable screen rather than the fixed wall, that established a sense of place.
Proportion in architecture has long been discussed in terms of the idealised human body. And while proportioning systems have also been based on music and Pythagorian harmonic ratios, the focus of this paper will be predominantly anthropocentric, since it explores the relationship between textile design and architecture, the shift from the clothed body to the dressed environment. Much has been written on proportion however there has been little written on the nature of scale, moreover, even less written on the shifts in scale that occur within and between mediums and modes of production.
Departing from a series of photographic images entitled ?Urban Fabric? (2006), which reveals the textile heritage of architectural constructions, inherent in the very patterning of their surfaces, this paper considers the nature of scale, the implications of dimensional variation and material appropriation, and the relationship between the haptic and the optic, in response to these images of mid-twentieth century corporate architecture and geometrically patterned textile design. Furthermore, this investigation speculates on the necessary contribution of ornamentation in interstices between the small scale maquette and its full-scale manifestation, regardless of whether the outcome encloses and shelters the body or can be held in the hand. In doing so, it seeks not only to reactivate a dialogue between craft, in particular textile design and architecture, but to emphasise the necessity of their engagement in the design and construction of our cities.
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