DESIGN - LIVING

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DESIGN - LIVING
RADU DAMIAN
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I am an artist specialised in interior design and
ambient, so Im going to talk about this
particular branch of design which in itself is
the result of our cultural heritage. There are
3 important aspects that I am going to point out
during this presentation.
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CHAPTER 1
MATERIAL
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Everything has to be made of something, but the
world isnt static, it changes, it transforms and
grows, the world is alive. In order to build
something, we must understand the material we use
and how it changes if it is exposed to different
forces.
Everything has to be made of something, but the
world isnt static, it changes, it transforms and
grows, the world is alive. In order to build
something, we must understand the material we use
and how it changes if it is exposed to different
forces.
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Every material has its limits so I created this
paper structure in order to understand its
limits. I wanted to see how the material would
react to one of the most important forces in the
universe GROWTH.
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I chose the pentagon to represent the cell, the
unit I used in building the structure. I chose it
because it is a perfect symbol for the cell. I
needed one side to represent the initial cell
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and two opposing sides to represent the new
cells, bursting from the first.
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Something still wasnt working because the
symmetry of the pentagon made it so that any of
the sides could be used for the division so the
growth would have been chaotic.
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Another reason was that the resulting shape would
have been this
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Im not a very big soccer fan, so the answer was
to apply a force, so I applied the force of
growth.
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Starting from a triangular prism formed by 3
pentagons, I added each layer of new cells,
observing how the material bent and distorted
its surface in order to fit in the structure.
The result was not a shape that was in any way
influenced by me but a natural and organic one.
I noticed how the shape almost fully changed
after adding each layer. When I stopped adding
cells I looked at the structure and I saw that
some parts of it resemble certain things from our
surrounding world, so, using different photos of
the structure I composed a landscape with caves
and cliffs, all from the same building blocks but
merged together as if the growing process didnt
start only from one point but from multiple
places simultaneously.
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In another image, the composition resembles the
body of a caterpillar.
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The importance of this experiment is that it
shows how an ordinary material reacts to a force.
Understanding that different materials react in
different ways and can be used for different
types of construction techniques and also in
certain places that offer the right
circumstances, is the basis of understanding
design. Here are some exemples of structures,
different arches and doorways built using stone.
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Now we have the material, we can build, but our
buildings are meaningless unless they have a
direct link to the surrounding environment.
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CHAPTER 2
CONTEXT
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This is the way we transform the world, changing
chaos into order, changing a random landscape
into a well-known place that is unique.
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This is a field. A random field, it could be
anywhere in the world and nobody would care.
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Now its a farm.
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This is a ditch.
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Now its a defense mechanism.
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This is a cliff
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Now its one of the most important places on a
coast, a lighthouse.
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This is a desert, it could be anywhere in the
world.
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Now it is the Silk Road. These are
elements that by themselves appear random, but
combined, through context, they gain new meaning
and become pieces of culture.
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This is a symbolic approach on Ecology. This
drawing represents the act of using materials
specific to a place and transforming the chaos
into order without upsetting the environment. You
can see how the soil is scooped out together with
grass and rocks and it becomes a shelter. The
hole in the middle is a window and it represents
the relationship between the interior and the
exterior spaces. I chose the chair as a symbol
for living, for the presence of a human being in
the middle of the newly created habitat. As you
can see, the chair has weird proportions, it is
pressed down by an invisible force which is the
force of a person who sat down on it for a long
time. The light coming through the window
represents the human perspective.
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CHAPTER 3
SYMBOL
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This is a random river, it could be anywhere in
the world. The river is a border between two
worlds, that which lies on its left bank and the
other from the right bank. This river could be
crossed at any point along its length but
something happens if we start the constructing of
a bridge
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This not only becomes a unique place where the
river could be crossed but also we have a
connector, a link between the two banks, a link
between the water and the sky, a link between
different worlds. The bridge is more than a
bridge, its a symbol. You can see how the right
material, stone, in the right context, gains
symbolic meaning and also, how the material grows
from stone found in the chaos, becomes organized
through the process of building, into a structure
which is true to its purpose.
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This is my illustration of AXIS MUNDI. IT is a
study of natural and artificial light in a
symbolic hut, built from traditional materials in
a symbolic way. The structure rests on 4 pillars
that converge towards the top. The pyramidal look
of the hut resembles mountains and thus is an act
of imitating the gods, building this hut is a
ritual, copying the primordial forces of the
universe that created the world as we know it.
There are 2 walls and a doorway. One of the walls
is made of stone, the other of wood. They
represent different cultures. The doorway is an
initiation portal, it is the link between chaos
and order, between wilderness and civilization,
between outside and inside, between usual and
sacred. In the middle of the hut we find a
circular hole which is used for lighting a fire.
Light is an important material. The smoke from
fire rises through the OCULUS at the top of the
structure. This column of smoke at night,
together with the column of light that descends
through the opening at day, represent the axis of
the world. This is the way to contact the
divinity. This opening connects the divine of the
sky with the sacred space inside the hut.
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This particular image is conceived to
illustrate transcendence. The first quarter of
the image shows the light bursting through the
Oculus. This is mans perspective and his wish to
transcend. The second quarter shows the
natural light connecting with the hole in the
middle of the hut, thus establishing a continuity
between the divine and the underworld. The
third quarter shows the sacred ritual of lighting
the fire. The fourth image shows the perspective
of the transcended being. There are 4 pictures,
there are 4 pillars in the structure, there are 4
materials used (stone, wood, earth and light),
there are 4 cardinal points and so on. These
represent the cycle of the sacred time because
there are also 4 seasons.
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SO, if we use the right material, in the right
context, with the right symbol, we get a sum of
these 3 aspects of design, and that sum is
IDENTITY, which is my field of study and research.
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MATERIAL
CONTEXT
SYMBOL
IDENTITY