Point_1: Theories

If there is one concept I could take from the theories unit it is that design is as much about the people and culture that surround and produce architecture as it is about the physical and visual components that we primarily experience.  Hall states that language is a developmental byproduct of culture and that each language is engendered with different subcultures, sensory environments, ideologies, and even thought processes.  These differences from language alone affect how each culture views and produces design.  One analogy, relating to a sub cultural theme, could be the teapot theory where a white culture may relate the pot to the shape of a breast and the warmth from the tea that permeates the pot refers to the comfort of warm milk as opposed to a black culture that might see the teapot as a sign of oppression.  Similarly, language effects thought processes that may account for the differing ideologies between Western design (man is the measure of all things) and Eastern design (man’s place within nature).

We refer to architecture and more holistically, design, as being an unavoidable art because it is the only art that truly lives.  We live in architecture, we see architecture, we hear architecture, we eat in architecture, and we experience it in one way or another on a daily basis, whether in the more bland, vernacular sense or the specialized, high-style sense.  From my understanding, to learn about design I must look at the design principles of both vernacular and high style architecture because they both fulfill different desires from the people of the time, and architecture is after all just an extension of man. Vernacular design falls more heavily on the commodious, utilitarian side of design with moderate attention to firmness, and least of all on delight but most designs tend to remain uniform and unchanging throughout history save for technological upgrades.  On the other hand, high-style design is a fashion statement with greater emphasis on delight and therefore changes according to new alternatives and explorations.

The most important conceptual definitions from this unit are Commodity, Firmness, and Delight, or as I like to phrase it, Function, Structure, and Aesthetic.  All designs in architecture are posed with these three hurtles.  From reading Roth, function encompasses the use of a structure by how simply it can be interpreted from architectural systems such as spatial navigation, light, acoustics, and specific placement.  Perhaps a novel concept to me is how symbolic function is as important as utilitarian function.  For example, specific symbolic motifs on the exterior such as the cantilevered wings on Eero Saarinen’s Trans World Airlines Terminal can aid in the distinction of the function of the interior (flight and dynamic movement).  Structure is an obvious dilemma with architecture when considering physical structure, but a more elusive concept is that of perceptual structure, which deals with the way we see structure.  This could mean anything from large glass curtains to perceive dematerialized, gravity defying structures to massive, over-sized columns to symbolize strength and power.  Delight is the most obscure concept and varies according to opinion.  Perhaps this is why minimalist designs became so popular because they subtracted ornamental distractions and focused on simplistic forms of delight common across many cultures such as mass verses void and repetition verses irregularity.  The nature of three concepts (Commodity, Firmness, Delight) that are intertwined and form a cohesive statement about design shows how the power of three represents a different dimension beyond me or you but a higher power that is something else.  This ‘something else’ is what keeps design from being one standard uniform whole but also something interesting, elusive, and ever changing.  

http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/coober-pedy-cave-lg.jpg

I choose this image because it ties together the structure of a prehistoric cave with aspects of modern commodity and delight.  I think this is a good example of how, throughout time, we always turn to precedent for design purposes and reconstruct them into a 'modern' language.  Studying this image. it is clear that design is all about cultural language being transposed and past down, making the architecture and design more about the people who found purpose in them rather than the physical existence itself.