Class Readings during the first term ( Feb ~ 11 of April)

-The Revival of Handicraft-

It is written by William Morris.
It is his discuusion about the handicraft in producing products.
When the mass production has been occured people did not prefer the handicraft, the beauty in the products has gone.
I don't think the mass production is too bad to peopel, society and out culture. We can not reject the mass production in thesedays and I can understand why he say that the handicraft is important. Is it impossible to find the beauty in mass production? is the handicraft only way to describe the beauty for the designer?


- Men, Machines, and the World about-

Norbert Wienner began working toward Cybernetics while engaged in a world war 2 research project. Cybernetic is perhaps most immediately recognized for bringing the “cyber” prefix into English usage in terms like cyborg and cyberspace. Cybernetics sought to create an overarching study of “communication and control in the animal and machine”.
He said the new industrial revolution which is taking place now consists primarily in replacing human judgement and discrimination at low levels by the discrimination of the machine.
These days, Men control the machine and the world is being made up by the machines. Does it mean machines are controlling our world even though we are operating the machine? We should be aware whether operating the machine is our option or our compulsory in order to live in a recent world. Men are the owner of the world but not machines.


- Cold War Hot House-

This text makes us to think how much design has come out from the war and how it affected to the industrial fields. Cold War Hot House, written by Beatriz Colomina, she researched on the period had focused on the impact of World War 2 on architectural discourse. In other words, the redefinition of the architect and architectural design by the war. Cold war Hothouse, meaning all of the new forms of domesticity that emerged during the period and that in many ways we still occupy today. Everything in the postwar age was domestic. The entire Cold War culture blurs the distinction between work and play, business and entertainment, appliance and toys, buiding and dollhouses. The consumer was treated as an intelligent and playfully creative decision maker. There were some changes of design in diverse field within and after the cold war, and that influence has been continued to the current society and culture.