461 research outputs found
Normal Bel Geddes
No full textPhotograph of Normal Bel Geddes, author of the Toledo Tomorrow plan of 1945
Normal Bel Geddes
No full textPhotograph of Normal Bel Geddes, author of the Toledo Tomorrow plan of 1945
The intellectual origins and social landscapes of Patrick Geddes, ca. 1880-1899
No full textThis thesis aims to examine the intellectual origins and social landscapes of Patrick
Geddes. It provides a scope for establishing a clearer picture of his initiatives in Edinburgh
between 1880 and 1899. Its contribution to Scottish history is highly valuable in fashioning a
critical evaluation of the historical figure through the lens of available archival
documentation. Most of this work has been derived from documents housed at the National
Library of Scotland and the vast collection of Patrick Geddes papers at the University of
Strathclyde. The great majority of archives that have been sourced have yet to be fully
assessed or published.
The scope of this research has been to reconstruct a narrative around Geddes’
intellectual origins in relation to the development of his early activity. It further intends to be
a starting-point for filling a large gap in Geddesian studies. Moreover, it traces the
construction of P.G.’s diverse social landscape through co-operative means and crafts a new
focus for assessing the Scottish context of his generalist philosophy. Furthermore, this thesis
furnishes a new perspective relating to his intellectual upbringing, professional evolution and
generalist practice. More broadly, this research firmly places Geddes in the tradition of
Scottish intellectual history
Virgil Geddes With His Publications
No full textBlack and white photograph of author, playwright and poet Virgil Geddes. Geddes is standing behind several of his published works, including The Earth Between and Behind the Night (1930), Poems 41 to 70 (1926), Native Ground (1932), Country Postmaster (1952), and From the Life of George Emery Blum (1933). The back of the photograph has a typed slip attached that reads, Please credit photo. Leon A. Barsz, Brookfield, Conn.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/spec_photos/1152/thumbnail.jp
Globes, savoir situé et éducation à la beauté : Patrick Geddes géographe et sa relation avec les Reclus
No full textInternational audienceCet article interroge la relation que Patrick Geddes a entretenue avec la géographie. Souvent évoquée, elle n'a pas encore étudiée systématiquement à travers une analyse de sa collaboration avec le réseau des géographes anarchistes : Pierre Kropotkine, Élie, Élisée et Paul Reclus. Nos sources principales sont les archives et les travaux géographiques de Geddes. Nous suivons l'exhortation de Charles Withers, qui invite à étudier la géographie interne de l'Outlook Tower d'Édimbourg par l'analyse des objets exposés dans ce « musée géographique ». Notre problématique s'ordonne autour de deux aspects thématiques contigus. Le premier d'entre eux est l'engagement de Geddes dans l'enseignement de la géographie et la résonance de sa critique du système éducatif, qualifié de « fabrique d'imbéciles artificiels », avec la pédagogie libertaire. Le second aspect est sa critique, tout à la fois didactique et épistémologique – et inspirée par Élisée Reclus –, de la carte plane en tant qu'instrument de représentation du monde
Scenography and new media technologies: history, educational applications and visualization techniques
No full textThe endemic presence of digital technology is responsible for numerous changes in contemporary Western societies. This study examines the role of multimedia within the field of theatre studies, with particular focus on the theory and practice of theatre design and education. In the cross-disciplinary literature review, I investigate such primary elements of contemporary media as interactivity, immersion, integration and hyper-textuality, and explore their characteristics in the performing arts before and during the digital epoch. I also discuss various IT applications that transformed the way we experience, learn and co-create our cultural heritage. In order to illustrate how computer-generated environments could change the way we perceive and deliver cultural values, I explore a suite of rapidly-developing communication and computer-visualization techniques, which enable reciprocal exchange between viewers, theatre performances and artefacts. I analyze novel technology-mediated teaching techniques that attempt to provide a new media platform for visually-enhanced information transfer.
My findings indicate that the recent changes towards the personalization of knowledge delivery and also towards student-centered study and e-learning necessitated the transformation of the learners from passive consumers of digital products to active and creative participants in the learning experience. The analysis of questionnaires and two case studies (the THEATRON and the VA projects) demonstrate the need for further development of digital-visualization techniques, especially for studying and researching scenographic artefacts. As a practical component of this thesis, I have designed and developed the Set-SPECTRUM educational project, which aims to strengthen the visual skills of the students, ultimately enabling them to use imagery as a creative tool, and as a means to analyze theatrical performances and artefacts. The 3D reconstruction of Norman Bel Geddes' set for The Divine Comedy, first of all, enables academic research of the artefact, exposing some hitherto unknown design-limitations in the original set-model, and revealing some construction inconsistencies; secondly, it contributes to educational and creative practices, offering an innovative way to learn about scenography. And, thirdly, it fills a gap in the history of the Western theatre design.
This study attempts to show that when translated into digital language, scenographic artefacts become easily retrievable and highly accessible for learning and research purposes. Therefore, the development of such digital products should be encouraged, but care should also be taken to provide the necessary training for users, in order to realize the applications' full potential
R v Geddes [1996] Crim LR 894, Court of Appeal
No full textEssential Cases: Criminal Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in R v Geddes [1996] Crim LR 894, Court of Appeal. The document also included supporting commentary from author Jonathan Herring.</p
Imagining the organic city
No full textThis thesis examines three 'organic tropes' of modern architecture and urban design, addressing different crucial moments of change within modernist discourse. Attention is focused on the institutionalization of 'town planning' at the turn of the last century; the shift during the post-war years; and the beginning of urban debate in Japan during the early 1960s. The study builds upon the thesis that 'the organic' constitutes a basic trope of a modernism that reinvents the term over and over again. In its ambivalent relationship to modernity, which it both embraces and rejects, the organic hovers between progressivist and nostalgic imaginations. There has been relatively little enquiry into 'the organic' as part of the larger system of modernism in architecture and urbanism. This is because of its unclear identity. Historically, urban organic rhetoric emerged in times of change, revision, or when a debate about basic principles of planning practice was at stake, in times that were experienced as crisis. The rhetoric of the organic springs from the desire or need to reconcile conflicting parts into a coherent whole. The urban schemes discussed here, such as Patrick Geddes’ vision of an organic city, or the megastructures of the metabolists, are based on contradictions taking in aspects of individual agency and collectivity, or fragmentation and totality. Attempting to take a holistic perspective on urban processes and city change, they opened up for a range of political issues concerning authority in city planning and the status of the citizens in this procedure. Beside formal questions we find organizational concerns that go beyond static plans in envisioning sustainable futures through the thinking in processes and the proposal of programs. This text explores discursive and theoretical works with a distinct programmatic character, which have primarily taken place at the level of visions rather than through actual materializations in the city fabric. These works are considered in the context of their projective model character, and their relevance for the discourse on cities and citizens, the nature of planning, and urban design
‘Both Natural and Mechanical: the Streamlined Designs of Norman Bel Geddes,' Journal of Transport History 30:2 (2009), pp. 141-167.
No full textThis article, published in the peer-reviewed ‘Journal of Transport History’, examines the work of Geddes as an early and significant exponent of streamlining, arguing that the style has been largely overlooked as an important modernist expression, containing within it a number of competing and contradictory meanings, following Andreas Huyssen’s (1986) exploration of a dialectical modernism which bridges the avant-garde and mass culture. It explores streamlining as originating – from the 1930s, when it first gained force as a styling fad, into the 1950s, when it had achieved widespread and longstanding popularity – within a cultural space created by seemingly irreconcilable philosophies: the organic and the mechanized. The article provides a cross-disciplinary model spanning histories of modernism, design, and transport.
Extending the article research exploring the symbolic meanings of streamlining was developed for a conference presentation ‘Moving People and Products: Flow as a Metaphor in the Designs of Norman Bel Geddes, 1893-1958’, which was selected for Blocked Arteries: Circulation and Congestion in History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London (11.2010). Further developing this research was the article ‘“I Have Seen the Future”: Norman Bel Geddes’ “Futurama” as Immersive Design’, Design and Culture, Berg, 2012 part of the ‘Locating Design’ series, which presents the Futurama, Geddes’s blueprint for a streamlined future, as a pioneering form of immersive technology.
The article was developed through Maffei’s invited lecture ‘The Streamlined Designs of Norman Bel Geddes: From Imagined Ideal to Commercial Reality’ presented at the University of York Institute of Railway Studies seminar series (05.2006, convened by Professor Colin Divall), with input from the business and transport historian Dr. Peter Lyth, University of Nottingham and Prof Tim Benton, Open University
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