Hasta La Ideas

Many of the colour submissions that I’ve shared in the magazine or in my newsletters are definitely in the realm of the tactile such as paint, paper and fibre. But most of us are also creative with our digital media. UPPERCASE reader Paloma Diaz-Dickson shares her digital palettes with us.

“With the flood of art and design images available to browse on the internet, I find myself liking or disliking pieces usually based on the colour choices. Colour is the first thing my eyes see and comprehend before I look closer to distinguish shape and content. I started collecting colour palettes that draw me in, and in turn, that Photoshop file is the first place I look before starting a project. Sometimes I’ll choose an existing palette, sometimes I’ll modify it or combine two or more together to get the effect I want. Colour is the source of all my inspiration.”

The lovely Tif Fussell is having a pop up shop this weekend outside of Tolt Yarn and Wool (who happen to be stockists of UPPERCASE magazine.) So you can enjoy some yarny goodness along with some sure-to-be covetable dottie angel bric-a-brac.

Connu pour son incroyable travail d’illustrations en papiers découpés, l’artiste Eiko Ojala nous fait une nouvelle fois découvrir sa dernière série intitulée « Le bon produit ». Ces différentes illustrations traitent de la nature et de ses mets gustatifs, comme la rhubarbe, les oignons, les oursins et autres préparations culinaires.

A travelling abattoir highlights the reality of meat production and examines how it can be made more humane in this project by Royal College of Art graduate Janice Tseng Lau.

The Public Abattoir, An Atrocity Exhibition, forms part of Janice Tseng Lau‘s MA graduate project for the Royal College of Art School of Architecture. In it, a large floating abattoir travels around the world to lay bare the process of meat production.

“It is a campaign based on an activist vessel that travels the global meat route to raise public awareness about the mass atrocities of contemporary meat production, and to advocate for a more humane and honest relation to the meat we eat,” said Lau.

Visitors are guided through a series of passages and viewing platforms in the proposed abattoir to witness the process of meat production, from the herding of the cattle to the killing, skinning, and splitting up of the animals.

“While already constituting a shocking spectacle for most of the visitors, the glass-walled abattoir in fact demonstrates best practices in meat production,” explained Lau.

“My project is not against meat production, but it is for responsible and humane meat eating,” she told Dezeen.

The proposed abattoir would also stage an exhibition on food scandals to highlight the complicated nature of the global meat industry, and it would include a market and restaurant where visitors could buy freshly slaughtered meat.

“The on-board fresh meat market and restaurant act like a gift shop in a museum, and also create a shortcut by cancelling the distance between the sites of production and consumption of meat,” said Lau.

Lau looked gallery design when conceiving the project – particularly the work of exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum.

“It was part of my design intention to apply approaches of exhibition design into curating how the visitors experience the slaughter space,” said Lau. “I read a lot about Ralph Appelbaum’s design philosophy and his reference to curating linear journeys through space.”

Lau wanted the project to question the role of architecture beyond form and function, as a tool for change.

“In my project, the public abattoir is not a conclusion, but rather a narrative to address and open up a hugely topical and controversial issue,” she said. “I hope it has the ability to create debate and raise awareness of subjects that are formerly vague or hidden from the public.”

Here’s a full statement from Lau:

The Public Abattoir – An Atrocity Exhibition

The project follows two lines of interest. One that challenges the hypocrisy in the meat industry today, in which the pursuit of profit entails a saturation of the food market with more and more competitive meat products, at the expense of public health regulations and of the dignity of slaughtered animals. The other looks at our own detachment from such reality, and questions its causes.

The Public Abattoir is a roaming public space and also serves as a piece of public infrastructure. Inspired by projects such as Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior or Atelier van Lieshout’s abortion clinic Women on Wave, it is a campaign based on an activist vessel that travels the global meat route to raise public awareness about the mass atrocities of contemporary meat production, and to advocate for a more humane and honest relation to the meat we eat.

As the meat industry is a globalised one today, the strategy of the project is to site the roaming vessel in several key local nodes of a global network of meat production and consumption. As it docks the sunken public square on board is tapped into the city and becomes an extension of it. It then performs its public act. Its monumentality allows its integration into the historical centre of the city and gives it volumetric significance as a public space to be taken seriously. The external open public realm is transformed into a politically charged space of debate whilst inside, the public act of slaughter is performed and the atrocity exhibition of food scandals viewed. The on-board fresh meat market and restaurant act like a gift shop in a museum, and also create a shortcut by cancelling the distance between the sites of production and consumption of meat.

While already constituting a shocking spectacle for most of the visitors, the glass-walled abattoir in fact demonstrates best practices in meat production. It travels globally to countries with unregulated slaughtering processes, and becomes an activist vessel that questions local policy and starts debates on best practices in food production.

The post Janice Tseng Lau imagines travelling abattoir
to expose the reality of meat production appeared first on Dezeen.

Figure 1: Digital CAD used to communicate form and design aesthetic. All images Courtesy of Younghoon Hwang, UNIST, Korea

From thumbnail sketches to low fidelity models and prototypes to test rigs, CAD concept renderings, illustrations, mock-ups and visualizations, designers embody their design intentions using a variety of Tools of Design Representation (TDRs) during conceptual design in an attempt to provide creative solutions to often ill-defined design problems. The industrial designer employs TDRs with two objectives in mind. First, they provide a means to describe, explain and communicate design intentions to others. Second, they are used to reflect upon and develop one’s own design intent towards emergent—but still conceptual—solutions. As such, TDR use is a critical component of conceptual design practices. In a previous Core77 article (CAD vs. Sketching, Why Ask?), I responded to what I see as a limiting and somewhat circular debate on the role and use of CAD tools during conceptual design, drawing attention to the fact tools are only tools insofar as they are used as such to achieve a purpose. That is, the effectiveness of TDRs (CAD and sketching included) is dependent upon both context of use and, critically, the designers’ own skills, knowledge and judgment in their application.

In light of the dizzying array of digital, conventional and hybrid tools now available to the designer, this article builds on some of the issues previously touched upon. I aim to move beyond anecdotal accounts of this or that best tool, way of working, method or media in this or that context or working environment towards the fundamentals of TDR use during conceptual design practice. What kinds of fundamental designerly knowledge, skills and practices underpin effective and productive engagement with and use of TDRs during conceptual design? I believe that knowledge of these fundamentals is required both to develop more effective digital design tools and to contribute to design pedagogy alongside the more traditional studio teaching environment of practical skills acquisition.

Fortuitously, design research over the past 30 years provides us with important insights into the act of designing and the kinds of thinking it involves. Donald Schon’s seminal work (The Reflective Practitioner, 1991) on the notion of design as a reflective practice has been influential in providing a means to understand design activity and tool use. Briefly, considered through the lens of reflection-in-action, design activity is characterized by reflection (considering what has just been done, such as reflecting upon a sketch) and action (revising a sketch or CAD model in light of reflective understanding). Within this iterative process of reflection and action, the representation or embodiment of design intent is critically important. The designer must externalize design intentions through TDR use—sketches, drawings, notes, CAD models, physical prototypes, etc., of varying levels of fidelity—in order to reflect upon, test, and develop design ideas.

Important in influencing the nature of this reflection-action is the distinct character of the design problem. Design problems, unlike problems in the sciences, may often be ill-defined or wicked. The primary feature of these ill-defined problems is that there is and cannot be a single correct solution to the original problem but that there are many possible outcomes. In fact, there may potentially be an infinite number of possible solutions and a limitless number of ways to proceed towards a final design solution.

Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman (The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World, 2012) describe this engagement with the design problem as a search for an ultimate particular. The designer must come to a solution that is itself new or particular in relation to any other solution that may have come before, one that must provide a best or ultimate possible result given the designer’s emergent understanding of the design problem.

Figure 2: Sketch illustration to reflectively explore design intent

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