Terry,
Happy new year too! You wrote:
> there is a fallacy risk in thinking something that is the focus of a particular specialist group to be the explanation for everything
I agree. I think you are correct in saying that neither the Bauhaus, nor art and design more broadly are responsible for everything. But then, neither are mathematicians—an important but none the less specialist group.
Can we perhaps accord each a more nuanced role in the scheme of things?
David
--
blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
> On 11 Jan 2018, at 12:21 pm, Terence Love <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Dear David, Don and all,
>
> Best wishes for the New Year.
>
> I suggest there is a fallacy risk in thinking something that is the focus of a particular specialist group to be the explanation for everything.
>
> There are hundreds of design fields. For the majority of design fields, the Bauhaus is irrelevant - and for many unknown and unneeded.
>
> For the hundreds of technical design fields, much of the design and style is primarily, at root, shaped by mathematical language understanding and concepts.
>
> I would go so far as to say that taking a big picture on design activity, for the majority of design output produced in the world the Bauhaus is irrelevant - except to a small part of the work of a relatively small cohort of designers working recently.
>
> This basis in design practice and theories used by designers of a combination of mathematical understanding and concepts are at the root of, and pre-exist by thousands of years, the design concepts of the Bauhaus, Modernism and linked design theory concepts such as gestalt .
>
> In design education, I suggest almost all design theories and concepts fundamentally come from mathematic language and ways of thinking. However, in design theory and practices as taught in design schools, these concepts from mathematical ways of thinking are reformulated simplistically (in many cases over-simplistically) into word descriptions by those who are not directly fluent in mathematics as a language of design.
>
> For technical designers, the Bauhaus and Modernism can be seen as a simplified understanding of what can be better understood and used through a combination of mathematical and practical perspectives.
>
> In terms of teaching design history, the omission of the mathematical conceptual foundation of design activity is almost 100%. This is especially so in design history.
>
> The reason is clear. There is a lack of fluency in mathematical language by design educators. Much the same can be said about why the neurology and biology of individual cognition and group behaviours are not taught in design.
>
> This is also perhaps the core reason why design education has become obsessed with practical skill training - and the subsequent claim that there is no time and no need for anything else that is more abstract. It also perhaps accounts for the odd way that design history is taught and why it is taught that way.
>
> I can understand that many on this list (particularly those with lack of mathematical language fluency) will immediately reject the above.
>
> But as Galileo apparently said 'E pur si muove' (and yet it moves [that way] )
>
> Best wishes,
> Terry
>
> ==
> Dr Terence Love
> MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
> Director
> Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
> Perth, Western Australia
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> www.designoutcrime.org <http://www.designoutcrime.org/>
> +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> ==
> ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, 11 January 2018 6:17 AM
> To: phd-design <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: Re: History, the bauhaus, etc.
>
> It struck me while reading the comments on this thread that there is an important link between this thread the one ones on concepts, PhD’s and universities.
>
> One of the important contributions of the Bauhaus was to engender a playfulness in generating concepts and then following their logic through. In their context this was deliberately an abstract formalism (and for good reason in their context), but it never remained that way and would invariably ‘bleed’ into the real world of designed things. Throughout its use in the 20th Century this found its expression in what we think of as style: where a particular set of motifs, like themes in a symphony, are woven together to provide a coherent all encompassing vision. It is at the heart of much corporate identity and branding work. It’s present in the crude attempts at a coherent logic in the design of interfaces for operating systems in computers, signposting in hospitals, airports, and highway signs. These types of ‘logics’ have to be created, designed if you will. There is a real skill, craft, some would say art, in creating such coherent logics.
>
> Both Apple and Microsoft have struggled with these, sometimes more successfully than at other times. But there is no doubting that these seemingly superficial styling issues are important to these organisations and many others. This is part of the enduring legacy of the Bauhaus. And underlying the creation of these is a set of profound intellectual skills that were taught for the first time in an open and systematic way through the basic design course at the Bauhaus. It is these very important intellectual skills that now sit outside our universities, and have just been dismissed by Don.
>
> Well! I never thought I would find myself writing a defence of the Bauhaus. But there you go.
> David
> --
>
>
>
> blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo> <http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>>g/
> web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/> <http://communication.org.au/ <http://communication.org.au/>>
>
> Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
> CEO • Communication Research Institute • • helping people communicate with people •
>
> Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
> Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
> Skype: davidsless
>
> 60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
>
>
>
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