Designblog

There’s always something in old books that attracts me. I think it is the way that an old book already can tell you a story without even open it. There is a history going on in that book, many hands touched it, carried it, let them tears drop on the pages, all of that and the leather cover with the gold embellished patterns and the painted flowers on the sides are telling me that this book was special, actually Albert Magnus, a main Dutch bookbinder, gave this book  to his bride for their wedding in 1664. I’m curious what will be inside, but I cannot reach it because of the thick glass that’s protecting it from the world outside. Maybe I don’t want to open it, because now I can dream of beautiful  bedtime stories and fairytales that can be in the book. I can already see the big curled detailed first letter that asks you to take some time to read the lines without putting the book aside for a while.  Well, in this century grooms usually don’t give their brides gifts like this, so for now I can only dream of living in the century when they did…

New Tags for the Rietveld Library:

How do you find interesting books when you don’t know what you are looking for? How do you stray through the collection in search of inspiration? Can the library catalogue help you or do you better construct one yourself, Exploring connections in the library between design- and artbooks, students created keywords/tags that linked them together.
a recount of tagging the library

Click the keywords/tags from the Tag-list [purple column at the left] to see all related postings, or use a yellow keyword link [below] to read the postings and experience how they are connected together. Use these keyword links to navigate between the postings!

overview, freedom, animal, elder, identity, intervention, repetition, connection, tattoo, self sufficiancy, structuur, illustration, pyramid, leader, visual language, individuality, playground, best, give, beeld, independent, shelter, West Coast, time, neon, develope envelope, fragile, construction, wisdom, invention, oppervlak, culture.

Under dust of ages I’ve been here, waiting. After years, years and years I grow tired of me and mine. I guess that’s happened to my readers a long time ago. though my facts remain true, my language gets older. I have always been wise but slowly I was forgotten…

cat. nr. -corr-2

keyword: wisdom

It is possible for the human being to adapt to all kinds of environments and situations, but without a stimulative environment, inhabitants easely get the feeling of lonelyness, boredom and estrangement. “Beond Shelter” is a publication published in connection with the Dutch contribution to the 1976 Venice Bienale in which Tjeerd Deelstra, Hein Reedijk and Gijs van Tuyl give a comment on –current housing– situation at that time in the Netherlands.

As a result of the construction projects of the Dutch suburbs in the 70’s, the architects no longer knew for whom they were designing. They no longer had the same importance in the final say of their projects. It was more up to the construction companies to decide the size of the projects and architects kind of forced in to massive scale buildings. Whole suburbs where competed in few years, leaving no space for inhabitants to give their own charm to the area.

If the speed of construction for new dwellings could be more critically planed and the scale reduced, it would be possible to experience a direct contact between the inhabitant and the architect, or even architecture without architects to let the neighbourhood grow organically and let it have the characteristics of the inhabitants.

cat.nr: 719.1-cat-1

keyword: freedom

And again repetition. It’s also ironic, to repeat a search for repetition. But this time it’s different:
this time it’s art;
this time it’s pink;
this time it’s really big;
this time it’s Sophie Calle.
But still it’s repetition

A letter, over and over again, but the same letter. 30 women from different ages, professions, layers read it, interpretate it into what they think is the content. Now suddenly it seems not to be about the same letter anymore, but it is!
Repetition in language apparently is different than repetition in forms and shapes.
Language has a personality to it that by the slightest (miss) interpretation or (miss) understanding, the content seems to change. So now it’s not a repetition of the same letter 30 times, it’s about 30 different letters.
I get confused now, because I seemed to think that our interpretation of forms, prints and products would be more alike for everybody. Because a form is a form and a product is a product. Because we learned a cup is to drink from, we see a cup to drink from.

We also learned the meaning of words, but somewhere through life these meanings seem to form itself into (slightly) different ones.
Our idea about forms and products are also changing through life, but it somehow seems to me that there is more of a conventional thing to it, or al least a less personal one. At least the function.

cat.no. -call-2

keyword: repetition

Bailey’s exact term turned out being “montage” and, “compilation” standing quite close, came time to define the terms. Unfortunately, only Wikipedia was at hand and, as long as it hasn’t been functioning for at least two hundred years, I refuse to give credit any non-scientific information published on it.
Left with too precise requirements for search engines or flaneuring around, I asked for advices—leads on compiling art. I got back the exciting yet enigmatic book title approximated as Postmodernist exhibition. Of course there was nothing in the library, nor in the Centrale Bibliotheek Amsterdam or even on the internet.

Martino Gamper’s work—100 chairs in 100 days particularly—, questioned by Christian Brändle in the catalogue of the exhibition Wouldn’t it be nice… wishful thinking in art and design, could be related to that montage/compilation method. I would actually really like that connection, the emphasis on the blurry design/art shift, but I’m afraid it would be a little too much indebted to sophistry.

I’d rather come back to the ten books originally found. Four (as well) came from the art section—Local time and New York paintings and art of the steppes and vanishing animals. Out of these four is to be a postmodernist exhibition.

Within the previously defined grid they spell: Independent animal. Design books said: Animal gives.

cat.nr: 705.8-cat-184 + 707.8-sie-1 + 702.4-jet-1 + -war-9

keyword: give

Our sculpture teacher gave us an assignment this monday: To make a sculpture based on a painting by Philip Guston. He had also brought a book. I looked at it, and to my great surprise I had found a third pyramid. The painting on the cover is called “Pyramid and shoe”.

Guston, who first was an abstract expressionist, begun painting cartoonesque images of his everyday life and looking at them is like taking part of it.

About the painting pyramid and shoe:

“In pyramid and shoe (1977) the two objects named meet litteraly on an equal footing. The latter being no  less rooted in place than the former, it represents the individual and the ephemeral confronting the anonumous , the collective and the eternal”.

cat. nr: GUS 3

keyword: pyramid

I found a strange book with drawings made by children pasted inside. Why were they pasted inside, and why was only the first drawing printed in color.
The first drawings were made by children between 4 and 7 years old, the drawings at the end of the book were made by COBRA artists.
Language makes one look into the world in a specific way and the other way around; language reflects our ‘views’ on the world.
Children at the ages of 4 and 7 don’t look as conceptual at the world as adults do. Children mostly make use of essential basic-shapes by expressing their feelings and visualizations. Many modern artist seems try to get back to the essential by deconstruct the visual world. The understandable visual world falls apart and becomes one in abstraction.

cat.no. 705.8 zwa 1

keyword: visual language

I tried to find some relation from illustration to art, but the problem was that i couldn’t find any book that i need. I was thinking about Carl Larsson, swedish painter and interior designer. I think his watercolors combine perfectly art and illustration. But there was no book about him in library. After i was thinking to use music albums covers. Many bands use art works as a covers (like Sonic Youth used Gerhard Richter and Richard Prince paintings as a covers).
Finally i chose book “Masters of animation” by John Halas. I think many frames from animations could be present as a beautiful illustration. Inside this book i found short chapter about “my own” master of animation Yuri Norstein. I woudl like to present his brilliant movie “Hedgehog In The Fog”:

hedgehog in the fog (MOVIE) <———(follow this link!!!!!!)

cat.no. 799.7-HAL-3

keyword: illustration

I was walking around with the keyword in me mind: connection… And this nice little book jumped out.

This connection is really good. The human being fighting against the nature. One of the pictures shows a animal/person running away from a chanterelle, -Or is he just yelling “Hurrah” because he find the chanterelle, meanwhile he is wearing a rabbit costume?

This is a art book. A really art book. I don’t understand the connections anymore. The logic is gone!

It seems to be another way of communication, a more free way. I have to look at this book as an art book, and use another way of thinking.

cat.nr: -mut-3

keyword: connection

Doris Salcedo is a columbian sculptor who works with the seemingly fragile subject of memories. Salcedo has for years travelled the land of Columbia, searching out and listening to the stories of people who have witnessed and survived the cruel civil war. People that have lost parents, siblings, spouses, friends and neighbors to guerillas, drug gangs and military death squads. These stories Salcedo translates into beautifully unnerving sculptures. She works with everyday objects such as wardrobes, chairs and tables and she turn them into assemblage like sculptures.

In the Untitled series chairs and wardrobes merge into each other in solid blocks held together by concrete. The concrete fill out the hollowness inside the wardrobe and the space under the table as if trying to fix the memories and keep the secrets these spaces holds. In the work Unland the orphan tunic, two table halves becomes one, dependent on each other they create a new unity. Salcedo takes everyday objects and by slightly changing them she turn them into symbols for human relations and carriers of memories.

I feel affected by these works. They are curious, narrative, they want to tell the story but still don’t give away the secrets. I feel like this is art that wants to change the world, not in a big revolution, but by telling stories and changing us a tiny bit at the time, so slightly that it can barely be noticed. I’ll end this with a quote from the artist;

`I know that art doesn’t act directly I know that I cannot save anybody’s life, but art can keep ideas alive, ideas that can influence directly our everyday lives, our daily experience.´

cat.no. -salc 1-

keyword: fragile

Constructing patterns, all around the world.
That’s what they do in my last book also.
But now in a more emotional way, rather than functional.
Here its more clear what their dreams, fairs and thoughts are.

Outsiders,
as we call them,
just because they see it from their own vernacular perception.
More pure, more spontaneously, out of visionary need.
They are more independent from what we consider art.

cat.no: 705.9-car-1

keyword: culture

A part off this book is about connecting differents parts.
All these nice objects and combinations…

The pictures are so clean, there are a silent feeling on the pages.
The pictures shows different kind off machines- mostly from daily life such as iron, hairdryer and mixer.
-It’s the perfect world – I will stay here for a while…

In my imagination I can see the young women standing there with her brand new iron. Proud and pleased with herself.
-Did she change a bit?
A woman with a iron. Is more than a woman without..?

Here there is a very nice mixer, with a lot off possibilities.
You can put parts together in new combinations.
- Is this what we have as a human being? – 3 separate tools?
and then we just have to combine them in different way, so it fits with the situation we are in.

How many tools do we have?
-are they changing over time?

They are, I think.

cat. nr: 772.9-pen-1

keyword: connection

Mijn zoektocht mislukte De link tussen beide teksten, die eerst niet helemaal duidelijk was, heb ik wel gevonden. Omdat we in een tekst elkaar altijd iets duidelijk proberen te maken was mijn laatste boek het meest heldere boek dat ik in de kast zag staan. Het boek bevat allemaal verschillen ’dingen’, dat is  bovendien ook de titel van het boek: Dingen. In dit boek zie je bijvoorbeeld een ontwerp van een beker. Eronder staat in zes verschillende talen de betekenis van de afbeelding plus de manier waarop je het woord uitspreekt. Toen ik dit boek ontdekte, kreeg de zoektocht naar mijn televisie opeens heel ander perspectief. Ook andere mensen zijn geobsedeerd door objecten, door beeld. Dus dat andere perspectief is de fascinatie voor vele mogelijkheden van communicatie.

cat.no. 772.9-cat-50

keyword: beeld

As a final post on flaneurship and neon lights in the city landscape, I chose to write about  Bruce Nauman. This might seem confusing, because his works are usually displayed in a gallery or a museum, quite isolated from the busy city environment that was my starting point for the first post.

Nauman made some installations with neon light, some containing text, others consist of images only. I chose these three examples from the mid-eighties (One Hundred Live and Die, 1984, Seven Figures, 1984, Mean Clown Welcome, 1985) for the more or less brutal messages they communicate.  I still don’t know what the medium neon in itself expresses. This needs a more elaborate research. I’ll try to give a short comparison between Nauman’s work and the neons in Vegas. Comparing these two types of neon signs arise questions about this romanticist (yet uncanny) idea of a flaneur who gets sucked into a dreamworld of lights in the city. The common divider between these works of Nauman and for instance the neon signs in Las Vegas is immediacy. Both types of signs are attacking the viewer, but the effects are parallel reversed to one another. Nauman plays with a system of repulsion, while in a competitive commercial context (such as Las Vegas), neon signs would rather be used to evoke attraction. Still, I think both have to do with desire.

cat.no. -naum-8

keyword: neon

“things as they are” is a book reflecting photojournalism of the last 50 years.
it is a documentary about the development and change in this specific genre, but also very useful as an overview of of social, political and enviromental topics, concerning the media in this timeperiod.
Its definition as an artbook functions, because it is dealing with the medium photography itself, aesthetics, how they change, but also with the investigation of reality and how it is and has been shown to us.
It’s great flipping through it for the matter of inspiration, information, investigation, interest and the aestetical experience.

cat.no. 761.6-pan-

keyword: overview

you should not pick up “guerilla advertising” if you don’t have at least an hour to flip through this book.
it is reporting about advertising campagnes of various kinds.
numerous firms and organisations (e.g. nike, addidas. mcdonalds, the protestant church, the united nations, amnesty international, unicef or oxfam) with different approaches such as provokation, investigation, simply advertising or social criticism are represented in this book.
the methods are new; investigation of space and the use of human habits in western society are part of the adverting strategies.
there is several opinions about the capitalistic aim of advertising itself, but in my point of view is this book dealing with a lot more than only the selling aspect of it. definately worth a glaze… or two.

cat.no. 754.5-lue-

keyword: overview

When browsing the exciting digital world that is the library catalogue I came across a title containing the evocative, mystic word… vorticism. Conjuring up images of covert religious sects full of sinister hooded eidolons walloping around subterranean crypts. Muttering arcane, paeanistic assertions filled with astonishing amounts of radiant, completely redundant verbosity. These esoteric figures adulated to the apotheosis of the vortex.

Not completely to my surprise it was nothing of the sort. It turned out to be something rather less inclined to cliché’s and more inclined to paintings.

cat. nr: 705.8 cor-1

keyword: develope envelope

While I was looking for the book, which could give me some materials about identity, I found, that there are not much books about photography in our library. So, I decided to stop on this History book, which includes photos from 19th-20th century. I have chosen a portrait genre. But I found that it’s difficult to talk about this topic objectively, showing just a few examples. The idea was to show changes in society, that led to the changes in photography also. Not only technical innovations had influence on it. I can say that now we have a good material, good inheritance, that we can use in our work. And, of course, our present time has it’s own identity, interesting, what kind of changes it will leave after.

book no: 761-WAR-1

keyword: identity

we are humans…

humans who are creating…

creation is an human action…

humans who are destructing…

destruction is an human action…

creation and destruction

thats human, thats us…

-twom- I

keyword: playground

“Vorm van sculptuur” is on mine opinion a sculpture about sculptress like Marenne Welten, Anne Auloos, Inge van ‘t Klooster, Mia Trompenaars , Melanie de Vroom and Marenne Welten.
It’s a collection of small books form each artist.
Based on what i am seeing from the inside and outside of these small books,
i would say that they are showing fragments, details, sketches of the works.

The most interesting picture of the work of Anne Ausloos is for me one of her paper works from 2009. The reason why this photograph is so interesting to me, is because it brings questions and the form is funny.
what does the object represent? is it solid, is it edible, is it a sandwich?

if i talk about Inge van t’ Klooster i am talking about the most not attractive works of the whole group. i am basing this sentence on my taste and not on the quality of the work. the reason why i don’t find it attractive is because the massiveness and the darkness of the work. The Virtual work that she made with Martin Riebeek called “Between you&me” is interesting to me because it’s an outside platform for digital art. I think that this is a funny way to involve people in art. You could say that it’s performence art.

Anne Ausloos, 2009

Inge van t’ Klooster and Martin Riebeek

cat nr:726.8

keyword: best

If there’s one thing that is always important it is safety. Trust me I know. If there is one thing that is taken for granted it is safety. trust me, I know. but does anybody ever listen. No! I’m too old to make any sense in this modern world and heavy iron locks are not enough in a digital age as ours. trust me, I know…

cat. nr. 777.1-era-1

keyword: wisdom

Tattoo’s have been a trend for centuries. For some people it can even become an obsession.

Why would you choose to have a tattoo and what would you be interested in to have scratched into your skin permanently for the rest of your life? That are the questions you should ask yourself before you go to the shop and have a tattoo.

Some people choose to have a tribal, some an oriental drawing all over their back, but why do they choose that and what does it add to them as a person?

For example, a friend of mine has a tribal which he got when he was 16years old. Now he is 27 and he doesn’t like it anymore. So why did he have it actually? Because of the fashionable trend at that time? Or thought he would be cool? I don’t know, but what I do know now is why I had my tatoo. At first I just liked the image but now it has a meaning to me. I choose to have a chinese dragon and I have it on my chest. To me it means that sometimes I have to spit some fire.

I think most of the times a tattoo could emphassis the karakter and individuality of a person, even when it’s something that’s not even meaningful to them. This is why I choose this book.

Cat nr: 7464

keyword: individuality

For this book, I need to cheat. I will add a tag to my previous entries. Maybe like every book, this one is also a time related book.
The images in this book are trying to give you a certain feeling of action and adventure in the 1970’s. You, standing in a bar, always playing with your metal balls. Sometimes you are a cowboy, killing Indians. Other times an astronaut looking for new worlds in outer space.
I didn’t read any text, but I think to people have really interesting stories to tell you about how it is in the pinball business.
You should read them.

Sharpe PINBALL! Hamilton
cat.no. hami 1

keyword: time

Ondanks dat ik meteen weer een passend tijdschrift had gevonden dat over kunst ging en ook gelinkt was aan mijn vorige onderwerpen ben ik deze keer toch eens iets grondiger gaan neuzen tussen de boeken. na een blik in boeken van een hoop bekende en onbekende namen kwam ik al snel uit bij iets wat me wel aanstond; Een boek over Tom Friedman.
Deze kunstenaar werkt voornamelijk met materialen die we allemaal kennen als dingen die we ‘gebruiken’ in het dagelijks leven. bv: tandenstokers, suikerklontjes, kauwgomballen, een potlood, vuilniszakken, plastic bekertjes etc. met deze materialen creëert hij geometrische vormen of totaal nieuw ogende structuren. Friedmans kunst heeft connecties met conceptualisme, arte povera, minimal art en land art, maar zijn visie en werk methode gaat verder dan deze historische achtergronden; Friedman creëert een totaal unieke en eigen visuele communicatie.

cat.no. -fried-1

keyword: oppervlak

After first book with works of illustrators i tried to find some book which is focus more on describe the contents then on story telling. “Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005″ by Phil Baines is about that. Rich with stunning illustrations and filled with detail of individual titles, designers and even the changing size and shape of famous Penguin logo itself, this book shows how covers become design classics. That what i like the most is very simple, but in the same time very fitting covers design. Book filled with inspiring images, Penguin by Design demonstrates just how difficult it is not to judge a book by its cover.

cat.no. 758.1-bai-1

keyword: illustration

The choise of projects, which are presented in this book is very various and reaches almost any kind of design. Many international designers are introduced with their latest works.
A lot of the projects are highly conceptual and touch the blurry spaces inbetween design and art.
I found the title “design and the elastic mind” very appealing in opposite to the cover, which is rather scary.
Therefore I posted a picture of Elio Caccavale’s project “Utility Pets”.
He is concerning himself with the verious effects, that interspecies organ transplantation might have in our lives in the not-so-distant future.
The tools he invented, presented on the picture, are supposed to generate an intense contact/relationship inbetweeen the donor (in this case the pig) and the receiver.
From the upper left to the lower right:

- Smoke Eater- Toy Comunicator- Memento Service- Comforting Device

cat.no. 772.9-ant-

keyword: overview

Walking down the alleys in search of an appealing set of words proved itself being quite misleading, design-wise. Leaving me with the absurd yet strongly totemic ‘Independent animal west coast gives’.

I like to complain about the library’s limited scope. Tell about leaving the small glass room, heading to central Amsterdam’s libraries and bookshops, consciously neglecting a couple of very nice surprises, all of which I found sitting on the Z chair facing the catalogue computer.

When in doubt, turn to a search engine.

Independent, 2 entries: 705.8-cat-184 and 707.8-sie-1.
Animal, 6 entries: 702.4-jet-1, 593.0-muy-2b, 593.0-ell-2 (not to be found), 772.9-bra-1, -war-9 and 772.9-cat-59.
West Coast: No entries.
Give, 2 entries: 772.9-lam-1 and 777.6-cat-291.

Fitting within the given design field are two sober monograph-esque books: Lindfors: Rational animal: Selected projects from Stefan Lindfors’ first 15 years as an artist and Given: jewellery by Warwick Freeman, plus two more thematic publications: Domestic animals: The neoprimitive style and Perception and lightning as formgivers for architecture.

Of all the attempts to make these four books one—reference/number compilation, chance, arbitrary choice, sophistic attempts to relate one to textile design or sign language—the one I find most exciting on this Thursday night is graphic compilation. I’m humbly trying to keep in mind the cover of Wire’s On Returning, a clever mix-up of the band’s three first album covers Stuart Bailey coined as a rare artefact of valid graphic design (or something alike) in a semi-old (#11) Dot Dot Dot issue.

cat.nr: 772.9-bra-1 + 772.9-lam-1 + 772.9-cat-59 + 777.6-cat-291

keyword: independent

Building up a colourful construction with one piece of wire.

It looks like its done with a lot of patience, but is going really fast.

The act becomes automatic. Out of nothing a patch seems to appear

from one side of the wood constructed loom.

Patterns with different shapes and colours, like the map of Africa.

Every country has it’s own unique technique and style of weaving.

They have all found their own creative way of constructing looms

that help them in this seemingly tedious process.

To see those beautiful constructions

find this book of Venice Lamb at the Rietveld Library.

cat. no: 779.1

keyword: culture

In my previous post I talked about “City Signs and Lights”, about the design of a modern city landscape, attracting customers. City signs are in an ongoing competition for attention. In this post I want to focus on the interaction between the consumer (the flaneur) and the environment. I would like to shift between two cases: the architecture of The Strip in Las Vegas and the passages in Paris, in the first half of the 20th century.

The passage is a covered shopping gallery. The culture philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote about early consumer culture in Paris in his text “Passagen” (1930). He describes the citizen as a flaneur, not as someone who is exposing him/herself, but someone who is exposed to the attractive lights in the shopping gallery. The flaneur is a person who walks through the city without a specific goal. He/She gets into an ecstacy, going from one attraction to the other. The city unrolls as a landscape to the eye of the flaneur, but at the same time, locks him in. Benjamin calls this new city environment a “Fantasmagory”, the city becomes a dreamworld where different rules apply than in reality.

” If there is one place where colours are allowed to clash, it would be the Passage; a red-green comb is hardly noticed here ”

(W. Benjamin, Passagen, 1930)

I believe that Las Vegas is a great example of a modern day Fantasmagory. The city is almost entirely made out of neon signs. After the second world war, Las Vegas was growing extraordinarily fast. The consequence was a speed-up of competition along the Strip (the central road through Vegas). The actual buildings are all more or less the same: low, but a large ground level surface. This has to do with the climate and economical reasons. The outside of the building needs to stand out, both during the day and night. The result is a total mash-up of different styles, quotes, hightened symbolism, eclecticism, all in neon lights.

In the end, the building itself becomes a sign.

Vegas references:

W. Benjamin, Passagen, 1930

R. Venturi, Learning from Las vegas, 1970

Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990

05-heaven-or-las-vegas

cat. no. 700.6-benj2

keyword: neon

Excavating the library, looking for pyramids, lead me to a late 60´s representation of posters by the graphicdesign artist Milton Glaser. The choise for this book is solely based on the cover graphics and has no other connection to the first book selected, though it seems that the facination for pyramids and their monumental quality are shared by many designers regardless of the time or designfield.

The size of this book (A3) is  in my opinion very well adapted for displaying these incredible handdrawn posters. Every page is a poster and the more you look into them the more you see.

Bob Dylan poster 1966.

cat. nr: 754.1

keyword: pyramid

…While thinking about repetition and about the idea that practically anything could become a pattern by repeating it over and over again, I came to think of industrial design.

Where repetition in a pattern becomes this new image that, in a way, is stronger than the pieces apart. Repetition in products doesn’t really make it stronger. It makes the product less original en less valuable.
Unless you only plan on making a few of the same product, than the product suddenly becomes a collectors item or special edition.

Well, this second book was about industrial design…but also about language. Funny how these two subjects work together. Because through industrial design it becomes possible to have the same products all over the world. So for new products, new words have to be invented. A lot of products are called after their function, at least in Dutch they are. But wouldn’t it be an idea, to have international words for these international products? Ikea is already using this concept, so now people all over the world start having their own strange Swedish vocabulary of really silly words. Does that mean that in ten years every person, from Singapore to Munich would know that a LILLÅKER is the thing you rest your mattress on?

I think this book gives a better solution to this language problem, by just learning the different words.

cat.no. 772.9 cat 50

keyword: repetion

In the earlier times of human kind people built their own homes, grew their own food, made their own clothes and tools. They where self sufficient and the knowledge was passed on from generation to generation. With industrialization and increasing population, this knowledge has been put aside and most of it now lost.

It´s kind of impossible and pretty utopian idea to turn back to these old living habits, especially here in the west,  but maybe we could try to find a balance in our lives between what we can make with our own hands and what still must be done by machines. So before running out to the store we could think twice and see if we really need to buy this item that we need.

The more we can create for ourselves, the greater will our individual freedom and independence be.

cat. no: 710.9-kah-2

keyword: freedom

My search for another fragile subject led me to the book “The Crystal Palace Exhibition, illustrated catalogue”. Again I choose by title. Crystal Palace, what a beautiful combination of something stable and something fragile almost a contradiction. The combination crystal palace is somehow a little impossible as if it would only exist in fairytales.

The book is an old paperback, it used to be brown but on the back it’s been bleached by time and sunlight and has turned into a fifties purple. The pages are yellowed and the book is full of beautiful etchings of art nouveau design, furniture, elegantly ornamented pistols, silverware, and luxurious flower-print fabrics.

Last week I wrote about the book Fragiles, a book about contemporary ceramics and I can see a lot of connections between the two books. The art nouveau designs, just like the contemporary works, has a kind of playfulness in it, the flower ornaments seems almost alive as they intertwine around the legs of the tables and when you look closer at the ornaments soon you will find creatures and fairy tale animals hiding in the patterns. Another thing that I connect to some of the contemporary ceramic is the “more is more motto”. Some of the furniture in the art nouveau book is crammed with decorations, ornaments, cherubs and flowers, just like some of the objects in Fragiles are over the top kitschy. But there is something quite beautiful about this unwillingness to stop when it is enough.

cat. no. 772.1 cat 2

keyword: fragile

1. if you are searching for the best way to walk clumsily with a book, take this one.
2. if you want the best book for architecture of 21 century.
3. if you are searching for a book that is 4 kilos, this is the best choice in the library of the Rietveld Academie.
4. this is the best book if you want one that probably will not fit into your bag.
5. if you want to have a book that is larger than A3 format and if you open it, even larger that A2, then this is the book .
6. if you want to know everything about the architecture of 21st century, this is probably the best book for   it.
7. if you want to carry a book that makes everyone say ” wow, a big one” this is the best choice.
8. if you want to find out more about this book, the best way to do that is to go to the Rietveld library and search . .

cat. no. 715.9

keyword: best

This whole century fashion has been very influenced by the arts. This is because of co-operations from the fashion- and artscene which started already in the beginning of the 20th century.

In the 80’s fashion was brought to the next level, there was an economic growth which brought the attitude of the individualism. On the other hand this pushed the rhythm of change which meant the originality was less interesting because of the many copies and this ended the modernity. The post modern esthetics blew the galleries and museums away with its welfare.

Everything was said and done, from now on creations were nothing more then reproductions. The convervatism who denied the value of progress and ideology, focussed on the main values. This means they re-appreciated the art of painting now-a-days and from the crinoline.

Today again we are very much into individuality, which forces us to be more and more personal with ourselves. The will to keep your unique individual self is actually a statement which connects you to a certain group. You want to be seen for your specific, different individual personality and want to be recognised for this. And because you are not the only one you suit in a certain group that thinks in the same way as you do so you still fit in a box. Off course every person is different, but actually how unique and individual are we…..?

Catalog nr: 11297

keyword: individuality

Hij staat er niet bij, wel zijn er heel veel boeken over Japans Design. Ik keek in alle boeken. In alle verschillende boeken stonden goeie overzichten van wat er allemaal uit Japan komt. Het begon meestal bij traditionele Japanse kunst wat langzaam overloopt in design. Het is een overgang van mensen die eerst voor zichzelf iets maakte wat later veranderd in mensen die allemaal onder één naam product maken. In het boek Japans Design zie je deze overgang heel goed weergegeven. Het is super om te zien hoe veel er wel niet in Japan wordt geproduceerd. Japan is zover weg en we hebben hier zoveel uit dat land en dat is wat mij fascineert.

cat.no. 772.5-spa-1

keyword: beeld

It expresses alternative .It is graphic design it does say many things but it’s a chaos .Other levels of thoughts ,the same point of discussion .No solution,just view to a protocol of becoming machinery that doesn’t want one.
From philosophy to corporate identity…Corporation is considered as a person in eyes of law. Lets use psychiatry to make simple conclusion based on analytic view of behavior of this already established individual in society.

High ambition.Although there are some basic rules of behavior that you have to embrace.
Smile means –fake
devastation-chance
offer – manipulation
improvement – tactic
wealth – private property
choice – marketing
necessity – money

770.6 vos 1

keyword: invention

There is a blatant connection between my first and second choice.

I started out with a book by Rem Koolhaas called Project On The City which is a collaboration with several students from the Harvard design academy where he holds the position of professor. This Project investigates the consequences of the unbridled urbanisation taking place all over the world. In this context the meaning of the word urbanisation go’s further than just the focus of human inhabitancy in city’s but also refers to the cancerous growth of commercial landscapes which are framed by concrete walls becoming the centre and at the same time the banks of a river of ongoing development. One of the problems stated in the book being that the design professions can not keep up and apply outdated methods to the urban landscape creating a chaotic and unpleasant maelstrom of overlapping visual and audio stimuli with which the citizen (caught up in this maelstrom) is forced to deal.

Then I found my second book. City Signs and Lights by Stephen Carr (almost completely) coincidentally dealing with the exact same problem but focusing it’s attention on the problem with -and the potential of (the name says it all) City Signs and Lights. Rarely have I seen two books that complement each other more (although not always in the most constructive manner) and the focus on the bewildering aspects but also the potential of urban public space is a connection that fascinates me deeply.

cat. nr: 754.5 carr

keyword: develope envelope

This letter I want to attach to my last messege about identity in a street signs. For the second time I’m using this book, which you can also take in a library. This time I made a selection of posters made in different countries, but for the same movies. My thought was about the possibility of existance of different schools of postering. This posters, that you can find below, were made in the time when there were no internet for sending files with information and designer or artist had to improvise making a new masterpiece for the public. But this problem had made movie presentation even more interesting in different countries. Each country had added something special, non cliche. So, enjoy, and thank’s for your attention.

cat. nr: 754.1-keh-1

keyword: identity