3983 research outputs found
Sort by
Critical ethics for communicating indigenous craft practices
No full textThis article explores questions of critical ethics for communicating Indigenous craft practices through the lens of a project undertaken in Brazil in 2021–2022.The project was a collaboration between educators at the Royal College of Art, London, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil, and the Munduruku inhabitants who live in Bragança-Marituba, Pará, Brazil. It resulted in a “living” repository of craft practices and Indigenous Knowledge, incorporated into an online village library. The ethical and methodological questions this raised, especially around the issue of intercultural communication and critical librarianship, offered fresh ways of documenting the representation of Indigenous craft knowledge and traditional cultural heritage and point to how design history can be “owned” by a community
Commercial and research-based wearable devices in spinal postural analysis: A systematic review
Get PDFThe widespread use of ubiquitous computing has led to people spending more time in front of screens, causing poor posture. The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift towards remote work have only worsened the situation, as many people are now working from home with inadequate ergonomics. Maintaining a healthy posture is crucial for both physical and mental health, and poor posture can result in spinal problems. Wearable systems have been developed to monitor posture and provide instant feedback. Their goal is to improve posture over time by using these devices. This article will review commercially available, and research-based wearable devices used to analyse posture. The potential of these devices in the healthcare industry, particularly in preventing, monitoring, and treating spinal and musculoskeletal conditions, will also be discussed. The findings indicate that current devices can accurately assess posture in clinical settings, but further research is needed to validate the long-term effectiveness of these technologies and to improve their practicality for commercial use
The predominant image: Architecture recaptured by the emancipation of photography
Get PDFThe role of architecture in the development of photography and the acknowledgement of photography as an independent art form are often encountered in texts on photography and art history. The role of photography in the development of architecture is, however, discussed less frequently and in rather unclear terms. Architecture has always been informed by other disciplines and practices, incorporating their learnings within its own body of knowledge. Inevitably, photography’s role as an integral part of architectural practice and its dissemination has been crucial to its trans-disciplinary evolution. As a medium of seeing and re-reading, the photograph becomes a mechanism through which architecture can be seen and experienced anew. Photography can be considered either as a technical device or as an artistic medium, and the latter is what enables it to form and reshape notions of architecture through its interdisciplinary application. The photograph becomes an instrument of looking, understanding, and recreating reality and, as a visual medium, communicating it and developing theories and propositions. Each artistic photographic expression of built space can be seen as an architectural investigation in its own right, shaping ideas through its aesthetic and compositional principles. The establishment of the Düsseldorf School of Photography in the 1970s was a pivotal moment in the acknowledgement of photography as an independent art form and its association with built space. At the same time, a parallel shift was experienced in architecture, with theorists and practising architects engaging more and more with photography as a medium for developing ideas that would later become key subjects of architectural discussion. The thesis discusses a series of paradigmatic architectural subjects that have been fundamentally influenced by photography. These subjects are read through the artistic photographic approaches that created them, enabling links to form between developments in the discipline of photography and their architectural counterparts. Following a relatively chronological timeline it takes prominent theories of architectural typology as a starting point, moving to more diverse definitions of the ordinary and the vernacular. It continues by exploring the conceptual notions of presence and absence in space and through to the expression and construction of “real” space. Finally, it revisits the subject of “seeing” and visual abstraction in conjunction with the development of prototypical architectural concepts. The thesis argues that architectural investigations, whether theoretical or practical, are more intrinsically linked to the photographic discipline than is expressed in current architectural theory and that these investigations reveal that photography has been a much more fundamental than practical instrument for architectural practice, theory, and dissemination. As a distinct discipline it has the potential to re-frame fundamental architectural concepts, offer a new set of investigative practices and provide an added layer of understanding space. While the thesis focuses on these specific cases it also presents a framework of investigation for other areas of architectural investigation where, by applying this new disciplinary perspective on photography, architects might gain further insight into subjects that are taken as given
From compliance to care: Shaping modern slavery competency in architectural professional practice
Get PDFAs a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), I have twenty years of industry experience and a multi-billion-dollar built project portfolio. Ten years were spent in practice in the UK and ten in the Middle East. As Director of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Studios, I established and directed three regional design offices, providing me and this research project with a knowledge base of British and international working methods and professional standards. My professional experience has facilitated a solid commercial understanding of the sites of enquiry and enabled continued access to industry and government. This period in industry advanced my hard skills in client and stakeholder management, architectural service design, professional service and construction contracts, business development, and commercial and operational strategy. Establishing an early presence in so-called “emerging” and “frontier” markets, involvement in British government trade delegations, and familiarity with diverse clients imparted the importance of professional standards, relationships and care. Adapting diasporic professional services frameworks to local contexts and participating in the RIBA’s International Chartered Practice Pilot Scheme has enhanced this unique perspective. Above all, these experiences have informed my sincere respect for diverse cultures and practices and sparked my profound desire to redeploy this knowledge to make a positive social contribution. Thus, it was my intent to return to the UK and academia for reflection and engagement with the social responsibilities of architectural professional practice. Drawing on my personal experience, this autoethnographic research project began with a critical reflection on the RIBA International Chartered Practice in the Middle East region. Since establishing trade in architectural services in the 1970s, British architects have maintained a strong presence in the UAE, attested to by the recent introduction of the RIBA International Chartered Practice status to certify standards of British practices internationally. In Dubai, the newly opened RIBA office (RIBA, 2019a) marked the institution's first establishment of operations outside the UK. The RIBA Gulf Chapter represents the professional membership body in the Middle East region, the largest export market for British architecture. Unfortunately, there are several international human rights and labour rights treaties, such as those endorsed by the ILO and OECD, to which the UAE is not a signatory. This, combined with the lack of statistical data on labour standards, which these organisations publish, means that architects working in this area are exposed to the risk of contravening their direct and fiduciary responsibilities in an important commercial market. My research interests lie in revealing the complexity of seemingly straightforward scenarios, such as the RIBA Code of Professional Conduct, using visual tools as a research method to draw out relationships and paradoxes. Despite taking an unconventional academic route, my strengths are divergent thinking, conceptual expansion, and overcoming knowledge constraints. I am neurodiverse, and as a result, my soft skills have developed to compensate for traditional academic and social limitations. I feel most comfortable inhabiting the edges and hold equality, morality, and justice as central societal values; hence they are the subjects of my academic work. My research interest lies in revealing the complexity of seemingly straightforward scenarios, using visual tools as a research method to draw out relationships and paradoxes. Having stepped from practice to academia, I intend to commit to reflection through a critical analysis of experience in practice. The project works towards legitimacy across disciplines by instrumentalising practical knowledge in academia and, in doing so, extending its agency and impact. Whilst my experiences in practice have enabled me to make connections across boundaries, my approach through inverse thinking has clarified my research objectives and helped me to deal with complexity. My experience in architectural practice has provided me and this research project with a grounded knowledge of British and international working methods and professional standards. My adaptation of diasporic professional services frameworks to local contexts has enhanced this unique perspective
London in-between: Ritual, habit, and collective space
Get PDFThe current architectural debate has reduced the discussion concerning our cities to a mere infrastructural and domestic discourse. It has forgotten their secular, collective meaning. Françoise Choay and Joseph Rykwert, in the second half of the 20th century, spoke about the city as an anthropological form, wherein – if anthropology is conceived of as the study of the human race, its culture and society – architecture is nothing but the direct traces that society leaves behind. These traces can be identified as rituals: collective, repetitive and rhythmical series of movements, which have often been understood as paradigms that generate physical forms. However, the paradigmatic nature of rituals has also facilitated the deterioration of the city into a prescribed agglomeration of secure and anonymous buildings made of private or pseudo-public space. Rituals have thus generated a standardised and collective forma vitae that spans from our domestic to our collective sphere, slowly minimising their meaning to that of habitual actions. The contemporary misunderstanding between rituals and habits has inevitable consequences for architecture: the repetition of behaviours can produce predictive and standardised forms, yet a latent margin between ritual and habitual exists. There is only one character that ritual possesses over habit: rituals are collective temporary actions, which happen within a liminal condition. Rituals can therefore be intended as temporary and unpredictable actions, capable of manifesting in the space of the city and altering its status quo. A ritual produces a break in the loop of the ritual and habitual cycle, explores alternative social meanings and questions the indisputable standards that architecture obstinately and recursively puts into form. This condition is most evident in London, a city in which this monotonous form of everyday habitualness has seen a long and complex evolution that dates back to 1666. This was not only the first moment when the capital had to face the prospect of reconstruction and commenced its slow transformation from a city constructed at first in timber, then in bricks and stone, to a city made entirely of steel, concrete and glass. But it was the moment when collective outdoor spaces, as we know them today, started appearing across the city. From the fall of Charles I’s tyranny to the slow rise of what Michel Foucault calls biopower, this research selects a series of moments throughout the history of London when a clear formalisation of the dispute between ritual and habit had spatially emerged. These case studies are read starting from the collective life that was shaped within their boundaries, bringing to light the coexistence of powers that have affected their evolution and the role of the architect in the project of the city. The intention of this research is not to find a solution to the problematic way in which we design our city as a compromise between investors, developers and builders, but rather to propose that which should be considered once again as an anthropological urban form, wherein the architect can hopefully find again an active and participative role. The thesis begins from these premises, re-asserting that rituals are crucial to the meaning of architecture, but only if separated from the monotony of their repetition and conceived of as the constitution and perpetuation of quotidian social relations between the human body and its environment. Rituals can still act as space-making devices that are highly relevant to the discourse about architecture and the city, and must be reconsidered today as we face an unprecedented expansion of construction that risks superseding the act of building with the act of thinking
Ancient light: Rematerialising the astronomical image
Get PDFHow can the field of astronomical photography, viewed through the lens of new materialism, alter our collective perception of ecology? How does the coalescence of astronomy and materiality alter our perception of analogue photographic processes? In this time of ecological catastrophe, it is important to readdress our tangible, material connection with the universe and our planet. By analysing this interaction between astronomy, new materialism, and photography, new insights are provided on how this convergence of theories alters our understanding of the natural world. The thesis demonstrates the interconnectedness between the universe, humans and photographic materiality. It discusses the importance of investigating the materials that we use daily, with a specific focus on waste produced by the photographic industry. Analogue astronomical photography uniquely allows us to understand the intimate connection between the cosmos and the earthbound. Silver is found in distant stars, yet it can be mined from the depths of our Earth and used to create photographic images. Calcium is also found within stars such as our Sun, yet it is also a building block of bones and teeth, which can then be processed to make gelatin. In this text, I draw upon my own reflective practice; I have taken long exposure photographs of the stars in international dark sky locations and observatories. The methodology of this practice-based research is informed by Donna Haraway and Melody Jue, who advocate for an embodied experience of landscape. This research builds on Donald Schön’s concept of reflective knowledge. I discuss photographic artists working in and with the landscape, including Garry Fabian Miller and Susan Derges. I go on to consider more-than-representational, non-human photography, as introduced by Rebecca Najdowski and Joanna Zylinska. My thesis is situated in the context of new materialism, which seeks to understand the intrinsic material connections between human and non-human phenomena. I draw on theorists such as Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and Timothy Morton, as well as from Robin Wall Kimmerer, who analyses the complex network of material exchanges from a perspective informed both by contemporary science and ancient indigenous thinking. Understanding more about the interconnected nature of photographic and astronomical materiality, it becomes imperative to innovate new methods of sustainable photographic practice. This research demonstrates analogue photographic processes which are less damaging to the environment, including plant-based developers and silver reclamation from photographic fixer. Distinct from contemporary astronomical photographic images, which are often digital composites with interpreted colour, Ancient Light demonstrates our intimate connection with the cosmos, by examining the tangible, entangled connections between the stars, human existence, and the ecology of planet Earth. The thesis advances knowledge in this area by weaving these connections together, providing new insights into the materiality of photography through theoretical lenses of varying magnitude, from subatomic to cosmic
Serpent symbolisms 1: From mythological rage to biblical wrath
No full textFeminist gallery tour: Wiebke Leister and Catherine McCormack uncover how contradictory snake iconographies have been used in both mythological and biblical paintings. Date; Friday, 16 February 2024 About: Of old, snakes have embodied conflicting hybridities that represent both wisdom and deceit, danger and healing, redemption and destruction. Join Wiebke Leister and Catherine McCormack for two short 30-minute tours as they reflect on how snake iconographies are used to trigger our symbolic good-evil associations. Their conversations will reveal how the image of the transgressive serpent becomes a chance to revisit themes of patriarchal repression and feminist resistance from history, bringing them together with today’s lived experiences. 6.30-7.00pm: We discover the characters of the Medusa, the most famous of the monster figures known as Gorgons, in Luca Giordano’s ‘Perseus turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone’, as well as the satyr tangled in writhing snakes found in Titian’s ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’. 7.30-8.00pm: We explore the story of Moses and 'The Brazen Serpent' as seen in Peter Paul Rubens' painting, as well as the setting of the snake watching ‘Adam and Eve’ from above in Jan Gossaert’s depiction of the Garden of Eden. This event was part of the Friday Lates, curated by Joseph Kendra
Reflective narratives in social design: Towards an autoethnographic approach
Get PDFApplying design in the context of communities of practices has emerged as a field that aims to address global challenges in a local and distributed context. Through this conversation we aim to raise interest, to valorise and to celebrate the people who daily practice design in social contexts, and to offer a platform to engage in introspection as a tool of design research. In addition, we aim to explore the methodological implications of adopting Autoethnography as a method of scholarly inquiry in the context of design. The adoption of autoethnographic perspectives enables designers and communities to be situated within their context instead of being outside observers. This type of scholarship emphasises a deeper understanding of individuals, groups, and localities, prioritising creative forces such as intuition, imagination, and tacit knowledge over the divergence of generalist principles
Polyphonic speculations
Get PDFPolyphonic Speculations' unites plurality and possibility; two powerful concepts for Design Research. 'Polyphony,' in the Bakhtinian sense, encourages a dynamic, dialogical interplay of voices, viewpoints, and ideologies. Different perspectives, positions, politics. Different values, ethics, aesthetics. Multiple forms, multiple disciplines, even multiple identities. While ‘Speculation' alludes to what we don't know about the future, the present, or the past, here it recognises plurality in the rich histories of speculative design research, multiple interpretations of the present, and a multiplicity of possible futures. As a practical apparatus, Green et al (2023) refer to Polyphonic Speculation as, “a tool for collectively speculating in relation to complex challenges, through a process of speculative design, dialogue and reflection”, or more generally, “dialogue between design researchers speculating through design on a common topic.” Yet it is a nascent concept. ‘Polyphonic Speculation’ is open to being operationalised as a tool for Reflection and (Re)imagination, or for imaginative dialogue around themes of Resistance and Recovery and beyond. We invite a broad range of contributions, from critical engagement with underlying concepts of polyphony and/or speculation, to examples of work that intersects with existing notions of polyphony and/or speculation. Submissions to this track might include: Resistance to existing conceptualisations of polyphonic speculation. Reflections on the parameters of polyphony in the context of speculative design. Examples of polyphonic speculation(s) in practice. Critical perspectives that (re)imagine the polyphonic landscape(s) of Design Research. Perspectives on how polyphonic and/or speculative design can help galvanise resistance or recovery
Supplementary material: Inclusive design meets AI: a case study focusing on back health
Get PDFSupplementary material of paper titled Inclusive design meets AI: a case study focusing on back healt