Task 2: Research maps

The brief I am working on is “Make something disappear”. The aim is to use design to eliminate waste, overproduction or pollution. I firstly started  thinking of our every day life. After thinking a while, it comes up a few ideas, as the waste, energy, pollution, spirit, fashion and insect. Linking with all these, I manage my mapping for research as above. I hope it can board the mind of disappearing the waste well.

The mapping is really helpful for me to look the questions as a whole. Then I found three main options that I do like to get deep. These three are the Family violence, the Visual pollution and the Injurious insect.I followed the relationship between those ideas and our society reality to find out my research method. At last,  I will try to find the cut-in point to each contents by searching everyday life details.

MIES VAN DER ROHE

Ludwig Mies was born in 1886 in Aachen(Aix-la-Chapelle),Germany. He added his mother's maiden name in later so that his name changed into Mies Van Der Rohe. He was the student who used to study under the progressive architect Peter Behrens, and followed the nineteenth-century German architect Karl Fridrich Schinkel's tradition. Mies explored for creating a practical architecture without the shackle of all past formalism in his whole design-life times. He undertaken the architect design jobs, the journal report work and also the organizing for some exhibitions. There were many buildings and events famous for Mies's ideal integration of construction and interior decoration in his early growth stage about from 1921 to 1933, such as the projects for commercial buildings in Berlin(1921-23), the Weissenhof Development near Stuttgart(1927), the epoch-making German Pavilion(1929) at the International Exposition in Brno, Czechoslovakia and the administration buildings of the Bauhaus(1930-33) in Dessau and Berlin.

When Mies became the head of the School of Architecture in Chicago in 1938, he continually designed many campus buildings at the Armour Institute. He kept the tradition of the Chicago School that using the steel-frame method of construction to the skyscrapers. And at the same time, Mies also administrated and developed his own designs in this institute too. He maintained the same unitary character in all of the buildings.

Clinging to his uncompromising consistency and his attention to even the smallest detail, Mies successfully finished his landmark creations of his design career, the two apartment towers on Lake Shore Drive(1948-51) and in the Farnsworth House(1950-51).These work did not only to be built as an incredibly concrete model for all builders working, but also made many artists begin to following Mies's uncompromising approach in creating at that time.

Mies's effort to develop his furniture designs in relation to and in harmony with his buildings was always strong and lively. In fact, people would all agreed that he is the only one who could characterize his works as architecture taken all the way down to the furniture. Of particular importance in his regard are the Weissenhof chair(1927) and the Barcelona set (1929), as well as the Tugendhat and Brno chairs(1930-31).
In spite of as an architect or as a furniture designer, Mies's works always showed his special views on the possibilities and limitations.The ultimate goal of his work was to infuse order and truth in his buildings, whose functionalism and beauty were designed to serve people.

Mies was interested in the design of furniture, particularly of chairs, armchairs and stools, chaise-longues, etc. And at that time, although the studios and workshops of the Bauhaus had had the focal point of the experiments that the application of the tubular metal structure to provide an aethereal,light but strong support to the seats and backs of a chair, Mies van der Rphe still was the one who pioneered the design and production of chairs and armchairs in tubular steel, with Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer.

In the case of Barcelona, Mies designed the furniture with an unique character named "Barcelona chair". To be the same group creations, the corresponding ottoman stools and the two types of table were designed for the same place. All of them were not the exactly furnitures for mass production, but the creations of a series of ceremonial pieces designed for a very specific formal function: for the inauguration and the opening ceremony.

The only two "Barcelona chair" in existence were the royal seats on which Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia sat during the opening ceremony.The chairs and their corresponding ottomans were designed on the principle of a lightweight, almost aethereal structure on which the supporting elements rested.The details about the chair design is like this: Starting out from the traditional scissors shape formed by the two x-shaped elements fixed and articulated at a central point, Mies designed a crosspiece composed of two solid plates which were soldered together at the mid-point to form the rigid framework by means of the meeting of two of these crosspieces with transverse braces, also of solid metal. The supporting surfaces in the original version were cushions of white kidskin, upholstered in the English Chester style.

Shigeo Fukuda

Shigeo Fukuda is a Graphic artist, sculptor and poster designer. He was born in Tokyo in 1932 and graduated from the design department of Tokyo National University of Arts and Music in 1956. Selected at the Japan Expo’ 70 Official Poster Competition in 1967, then he was awarded gold prize in the Warsaw International Poster Biennale in 1972, silver prize in the Brno international Graphic Design Biennale in 1980, silver prize in the Lahti International Poster Design in 1983, first prize in the Moscow International Poster Binnale and New York ADC: Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1997, Shigeo Fukuda was awarded Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry design merit prize--The purple colorful silk ribbon medal. He was the appraisal committee of Tokyo Art University art museum in 1998 and now he is the Japanese Graph Design association presidents, the International Graph Design Alliance member, Tokyo Art University holds concurrent jobs professor, Japanese Graph Creation association presidents, International Advertisement Research Design Center honorary director.  

 Shigeo Fukuda, Gunter Rambow and Seymour Chwast are called “the world three big plane designers”. His design idea and the design work enjoy a good reputation in the world and has had the profound influence to the 20^th century’s design. His design work could be found in the present each plane design teaching material. Shigeo Fukuda held exhibitions many times in different countries in the world and he was awarded a lot of international prizes. His design idea and practice is remarkable achievement, so he was crowned as “the pope of graphic design” by the West. He used the manifestation similar cartoon, created one kind of succinctly and humorous graphical language.

When Shigeo Fukuda was in high school, he wanted to become a cartoonist, but at that time the artistic school did not have the cartoon specialty. So he invested his humorous and the talent into the design domain. From this his design work has the thick humorous characteristic. For example he designed the poster “1945 victory” in 1975. The poster described a bullet flies back to the barrel. This was a scathing satire on people who made war. This commemorative World War II ended the 30th anniversary poster design, won the international graphic design big prize.

Fukuda's creation scope is quite widespread, besides book binding design, poster, calendar, illustration, logo design and so on, also involves the handicraft, sculpture art, the toy, the building mural, the landscape modeling and so on each kind of professional field. His massive “the Fukuda’s type " poster works were known by common people very well.

The German present age famous vision designed master Holger Matthies said that: “a good poster should be depends on the graphical language and not depends on the writing to explain.” Fukuda's graphical language is succinct, humorous, ingenious and profound. They often are made of the succinct line and surface and have the intense visual tensely. They demonstrated that Shigeo Fukuda fully has the graphical language control ability.

Fukuda’s works reveal charm. The magic weapon is optical illusion principle precise grasping.

“I believe that in design, 30% dignity, 20% beauty and 50% absurdity are necessary. Rather than catering to the design sensitivity of the general public, there is advancement in design if people are left to feel satisfied with their own superiority, by entrapping them with visual illusion." he explained the motivation behind his technique.

 He is good at utilizing figure ground relationship and contradictory space and they made his work successful. Therefore he seeks optical illusion principle precise constantly and put the things and spaces together, though it is impossible in the real world. Then he can find a new knowledge of visual. The way to put reasonable and unreasonable together will build the strange visual world. It looks like absurdity but has a kind of order feeling and continuity.

Fukuda is the pioneer who uses heterogeneous isomorphism in his poster works by a visual sign. In Fukuda’s many poster works, it could be seen that he use this principle precise .The replacement is a presentation about using heterogeneous isomorphism. It means that chooses a simple and general figure as a basic shape and keeps the skeleton, then according to the idea, displace a new element and make it into a new figure. Although the figure’s structure is not changed, it has some kinds of far-reaching significances. The point is with the aid of a basic shape, keep the basic shape’s main features and displace new element to complete creates again.

In his design work, the replacement element which he utilizes is not merely the graph shape simple replacement, but carries on to the replacement element deliberates repeatedly, maintains the overall style uniformity, achieves his design intention. For example, his famous work "the Beethoven Ninth Symphony" the series of poster (1985 - 2001). In this a series of works, Fukuda used Beethoven’s head picture as the basic shape and replace the hair by new element. Observes these works from distance, it could be recognize who is in the poster. But when people observe Beethoven’s hair carefully, it also is made of some different graph. In here, the note, the bird, the horse and so on and some non-correlated graph element, all are utilized by Fukuda in his series of poster. These elements have enriched the identical subject poster connotation; simultaneously fill interestingly, manifest designer's rich imagination.

Also like, Fukuda’s "F" series of poster, the main picture is Fukuda’s name first letter “F ", carries on the change to this letter. This series also is different in " the Beethoven " series used the hair as the basic shape, replaced the graph element in its outline interior according to the subject, the reproduction which but in the multitudinous plane work was take " F " as the ground form, the author formerly which habitually used the graph mark or the performance way. Just like using contradictory spatial, optical illusion principles and so on, sitting girls and is running animals utilization and so on. It made the works have Fukuda's mark and become his representative work of heterogeneous isomorphism.