Cultural Reflections (Asynchronous Session)
Autofiction as Socio-spatial Criticism: A Feminist Approach to Design Theory View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Caroline Dionne
How can we revisit and rewrite fragments of our late twentieth century architectural design history in ways that challenge the priority given to singular, outstanding, or extraordinary individuals and buildings as worthy of attention? Can the intricate, intersectional power dynamics that yielded what we still hold as “canonical” be tackled to help reframe our understanding of the late-modernist architectural production? This paper presents a selection of in-progress excerpts from an ongoing book project that explores personal, oblique, emotive forms of knowledge production in architectural theory. In this project, I experiment with a mode of storytelling that sits at the intersection of autofiction and architectural criticism. I engage in an hybrid mode of writing, weaving together accounts of events that took place as I lived and worked in Switzerland for over a decade, as a foreign woman evolving in male-driven fields, with detailed spatial and architectural descriptions. Grounded in a material-culture’s approach to design history and theory, I examine productive epistemological and sematic relationships between the things we design and make as social groups and the ways in which we interact with each other, through legal- and policy-based structures, but also, and perhaps most importantly, as we navigate space in the anodyne, everyday context of our lives. The writing evidences entanglements between spatial configurations and social values. This in turn sheds light on more global issues of socio-spatial justice, gender power dynamics and modes of exclusion grounded in popular nationalisms. This paper is presented as a performative literary reading.
Featured A Comparative Study of the Rules and Objectives of Typeface in Nastaliq View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sareh Malaki, Tooba Shahriar, Atefeh Mohammadi
A typeface is an applied medium that plays an effective role in human growth and awareness. Specification of the text affects the interaction between the reader and the text for the purpose of comprehension. This interaction should also bring about a pleasant feeling for the readers. Hence, it is necessary for the type in which the text is written to fit the writing and calligraphic culture of its audience in addition to meeting practical requirements. This is where the need for the knowledge of the principles and roots of the Iranian Nastaliq script arises. Due to its deep roots in Iran's writing culture, Nastaliq can play an important role in applying identity to the Persian type design. Although, today, digitalizing the Nastaliq script in order to be able to type text on computers and digital environments is mistakenly referred to as the Persian type design with Iranian identity. This study demonstrates that Nastaliq cannot be used as a Persian type from a practical perspective, the readability and legibility of the script. In this analysis, comparative studies were performed on the rules and objectives of typefaces and the Nastaliq script, with a focus on Mir-Emad Hasani Nastaliq, Yagut, and Adobe Arabic typefaces, as well as Naskh script as a primary Nastaliq model. Results confirm that Nastaliq’s only ability is to provoke the audience with emotions, and thus it can be considered as an art piece, while the main purpose of a typeface is to transfer information at the most readable level.
Kolam Drawing: Use of Grid Systems in South Asian Expressive Cultures View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anika Sarin
Kolam is a 5,000-year-old art of making geometric floor drawings with rice powder practiced by the Dravidian women of South India. The research presents the construction, types, and uses of an underlying grid system used to make Kolam drawings. The study looks at a grid as a system of proportions used to organize space, compose form, and communicate meaning for an ancient ritualistic drawing practice, as well as an object of performative folk story-telling that holds symbolic relevance preserved over generations of artists. As a design educator, I am challenged with sharing history, methodology, and tools with students that are not confined to the western design heritage. The material expands on the history and application of grids in visual communication by presenting grid systems prevalent in south Asian expressive cultures. The skills necessary to draw a Kolam is passed on from mother to daughter through a mentor-mentee relationship, where young girls learn to work with basic visual concepts such as symmetry, balance, rhythm, form and counter form, and use progression and iteration for the arrangement of geometric shapes to make a symbolic drawing. By thinking through making, the community of Kolam artists keenly play around with natural materials, experiment with form that is at the disposal of all artists, and develop a visual language that is decoded in a socio-cultural context. The research brings together a female-specific canon of South Asian women’s creative heritage inclusive of methods, visual style, materials, and symbolism that is shaped through lived experience and tradition.
Visualizing Dead Soldiers’ Society: Designs Embedded in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chungsun Lee
Marking the 70th anniversary of establishing the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK) in 2021, this study explores the design principles of remembering the military fallen in the war cemetery. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the UN Command constructed the UNMCK to pay tribute to the 2,311 fallen soldiers from 11 UN allied nations in Busan, Korea. As the only UN official cemetery, this graveyard is embedded with the UN emblem, various symbols, and designs representing the 11 UN allied nations. Based on the ethnographic research methods of interview and literature review, the author demonstrates that the UNMCK vividly visualizes a dead soldiers’ society through the symbolic images of the UN. The research finding highlights that this burial ground may serve as a forum to share multidisciplinary perspectives on the correlations of architectural space, meaning, and raison d'être of design in society.
