Designblog

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.

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

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 One of the problems stated in the book being that the design professions can not keep up and apply outdated methods to the urban landscape creating a chaotic and unpleasant maelstrom of overlapping visual and audio stimuli with which the citizen (caught up in this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

I browse dusty books signified by typeface and the often great level of deterioration.

Title, Title, Title, stain, Title, stain, tear and of course a nagging pain in the neck caused by the uncomfortable positioning of the head, necessary to read the titles on the afore mentioned dusty books with ugly typeface justifying their own existence by amazing amounts of crappyness meant to be intriguing.

I browse dusty books and I am very impatient and yes, very annoyed.

I have an assignment to fulfil.

I bend down to take a peek at the lower levels and find: stain, tear, Title, Title, stain, bright clear red outstanding unpretentious untitled fat thing. It was such a relief.

cat. nr: 942.9 chun 1

keyword: develope envelope