Monthly Archive for June, 2011

Lev Manovich, University of California-San Diego, to speak at 2012 Design Conference, Los Angeles

Published on June 30, 2011 in Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Lev Manovich is a Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California-San Diego, Director of the Software Studies Initiative at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and a Professor at the European Graduate School. He will present in a 30-minute plenary session and participate in a 60-minute garden session, or informal Q&A, at the Sixth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices.

Lev Manovich is the author of Software Takes Command (released under CC license, 2008), Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (The MIT Press, 2005), and The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001) which is described as “the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.” More…

Latest Design Journal papers

Published on June 28, 2011 in Journal. 0 Comments

design

The latest issue of Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal includes:

Loredana Di Lucchio, Research Prof at Sapienza University of Rome, to speak at Design Conference, LA

Published on June 25, 2011 in Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Loredana Di Lucchio will be presenting in a plenary session at the Sixth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices, 20-22 January 2012 at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

Loredana Di Lucchio, Ph.D. in Design, is Researcher Professor at “Sapienza” University of Roma.

Her research and teaching activities are focused on the relationship between production, communication and consumption in order to investigate and define the strategic role of Design as driver for consumption aware behaviours.

She is speaker for international conferences, coordinator of several Italian Research Boards, essayist for theoretical and design reviews, in particular she is member of the editorial board of the magazine ‘DIID – Disegno Industriale Industrial Design’, and of the web-magazine of Italian Design Research Network ‘SDI Review’. More…

Chinese Secretly Copy Austrian UNESCO Town

Published on June 22, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Spiegel Online

An idyllic Austrian village has apparently impressed Chinese architects so much that they have decided to copy it in their own country. But the townspeople living in the UNESCO World Heritage site are unhappy about the plans.

Residents of the Austrian mountain town of Hallstatt, population 800, are scandalized. A Chinese firm has plans to replicate the village — including its famous lake — in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, Austrian media reported this week.

The leader of the lakeside town in the picturesque Salzkammergut region heard about the plans coincidentally in May through an Austrian economic delegation in Hong Kong where the Chinese real estate company responsible inquired about arranging a partnership between the two cities.

But a few days ago Scheutz discovered what he called an “indiscretion” — the plans for the Chinese version of Hallstatt were apparently far more advanced than he’d been led to believe. “I’m stunned, but not outraged,” the mayor said. He has since alerted both UNESCO and national authorities.

Architects secretly set their sights on the picturesque town in recent months, said Mayor Alexander Scheutz on Wednesday. “The people are not very amused that this has happened behind their backs,” he told German news agency DPA. More…

Design Journal: Recently Published

Published on June 22, 2011 in Journal. 0 Comments

design

The latest issue of  of Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal includes:

Deconstructivism: 7 Architectural Wonders of the World

Published on June 21, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

images via: wikimedia commons

From Steph at Web Urbanist

What if you took all of the elements of a building, hacked them apart and put them back together again without apparent rhyme or reason? That’s basically the visual effect of Deconstructivism, a school of architecture that explores fragmentation and distorts the walls, roof, interior volumes and envelope of a building in a sort of controlled chaos, sometimes to intentionally create discomfort and confusion.

“We don’t want architecture to exclude everything that is disquieting,” the co-founders of Austrian architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au wrote of their aesthetics, essentially defining the postmodern architectural movement that has defied conventions and courted controversy since the 1980?s.  The following seven structures, from five architecture firms that were celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art’s 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition, are among the most provocative structures in the world. More…

Design Conference, LA–Architect and Assoc Prof at Carleton University, Lorenzo Imbesi, to speak

Published on June 14, 2011 in Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Lorenzo Imbesi is an architect and Associate Professor at Carleton University’s School of Industrial Design in Ottawa, Canada. He will be presenting a plenary presentation at the Sixth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices, 20-22 January 2012 at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

Lorenzo Imbesi is an architect, with a PhD in Environmental Design, and is Associate Professor at Carleton University, School of Industrial Design (Ottawa, Canada), and he has been teaching and researching at Sapienza University of Rome from 1997. He is a critic and essayist for many reviews, and is currently Co-Director of the magazine “DIID – Disegno Industriale” and speaker also as keynote and coordinator for international conferences and curator of design exhibitions and events. More…

Design Journal, Volume 5, Number 2 now available

Published on June 14, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

The second issue of Volume 5 of Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal is now available.

Volume 5, Number 2 contains:

Continue reading ‘Design Journal, Volume 5, Number 2 now available’

Dieter Rams: Apple Has Achieved Something I Never Did

Published on June 9, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Designer Dieter Rams Photo: REX

From Matt Warman at The Telegraph…

On Monday, Apple will announce what’s next for its globally popular range of iPods, iPhones, tablets and computers, and the strand running through all of it will be peerless design, integrating software and hardware to produce devices and services that are popular because they are simple.

The man behind that is Briton Jonathan Ive, officially the senior vice president of industrial design at Apple, and he has long acknowledged Dieter Rams as his inspiration.

Rams, who has never spoken at any length about Apple, was the man behind Braun when it made a host of classic gadgets from radios to juicers, and he’s the subject of a forthcoming celebration published by Phaidon, to which Ive has written the foreword. More…

Latest Design Journal papers

Published on June 7, 2011 in Journal. 0 Comments

design

The latest issue of Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal includes: