Exhbition _ David Chiperfield

Design Museum CAFE, writing, doing research

With a style that is restrained, quiet and thoughtful, David Chipperfield is of one of Britain’s leading architects. He has a huge international reputation and completed buildings in China, Japan, Italy, USA, Spain and Germany. Chipperfield produces subtle and sophisticated buildings, from museums to homes, with an acute sensitivity for materials and a powerful awareness of their environment.
This comprehensive overview will look at key moments in his development as well as at major recent projects including the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, the America’s Cup Building in Valencia, Spain, the newly completed Neues Museum in Berlin and the Hepworth Museum in Wakefield, Yorkshire.

Exhibition _ RCA (V&A)

Future Fashion Now
New Design from the Royal College of Art

London's Royal College of Art started its fashion programme in 1948, the same year that Christian Dior launched his New Look in Paris. It welcomes aspiring designers with undergraduate degrees and prepares them for fashion careers through technical workshops, specialist lectures, project critiques and work experience.

Every year, approximately 3000 new designers enter the London fashion scene. Working against the odds, they join a competitive world where skills and ideas are essential to success.

The RCA's rigorous education has enabled graduates to work in fashion houses such as Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Chloé, Dior and Burberry. Other graduates such as Ossie Clark, Boudicca, Julien Macdonald and, more recently, Erdem Moralioglu and Carolyn Massey have developed their own labels.

This display shows work by the 2008 fashion graduates, many of whom already work for well known fashion houses. It reveals aspects of the students' design process: the research, the development and the technical skill.


Concept
A cohesive and exciting catwalk collection needs a strong central idea. This will influence the colour, cut, decoration, materials and function of the designer's work.

The RCA fashion department encourages students to develop their own design identities. Central to this aspect of their education are seminars in research and innovation, portfolio presentation and critical analysis, in which students must reflect on their practice.

The Royal College of Art's 2008 graduate collections take inspiration from many sources - the Ballets Russes, the London skyline, building sites and V&A exhibitions. Students research and develop their collections in their own individual ways. Some collect images and other source material. Others cultivate a core idea through drawing, making toiles (patterns in calico) or draping fabric directly onto a mannequin or stand.

Form
In transforming their designs into 3-D garments, fashion designers enter a problem-solving stage. Traditional methods of making, as well as innovation and experimentation with materials, cut and construction, are vital to this process.

The 2008 fashion graduates use a vast range of techniques to create and control the shape of their garments. They tailor, stitch, mould and build supports for rigid leather, soft fur, thick wool and fluid textiles. Some of them experiment with mock-ups in inexpensive materials such as calico or paper.

Instruction in pattern-cutting, tailoring, fibre identification and the sourcing of materials provides a good foundation for this work. The RCA also encourages corporate sponsorships, which can ease the financial burden of acquiring costly materials such as crystal, leather, lace and fur.

Technique
In creating their collections RCA fashion students have to develop their skills. They attend lectures and workshops in subjects such as dyeing, sewing, computer-aided design, knitwear construction and tailoring.

Aside from their tutors' knowledge and guidance, they have access to different types of technical equipment: laser cutters, digital printers, computerised knitting machines and sophisticated prototype systems.

Some students expand their options further through collaborations with colleagues from other disciplines, such as textiles, ceramics and glass, product design, jewellery and vehicle design.

This enormous wealth of resources allows students to experiment with many techniques. Several garments and accessories show a high-tech approach. Others are entirely handmade.


Detail

Detail, whether hidden, decorative or functional is an essential aspect of fashion design. Customised fastenings, decorative stitching, jewelled embellishment or a delicate print can make a garment truly unique.

As RCA fashion students develop their final collections, they use the many skills they have learned to define their work. Adding these often imaginative and subtle details involves rigorous experimentation. Collaboration with other students, institutions and industry partners helps where more specialist expertise is needed. Companies might donate expensive materials such as fur, crystal, lace and leather.

Close inspection of these garments reveals hand-dyed buttons, laser-cut acrylic, a bespoke zip-pull, crystal-embellished leather and delicate hand-stitching. These details improve the students' catwalk collections so discretely they must be seen up close to be appreciated.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/fashion/Future_Fashion_Now/index.html

Get background information and Gather sources

Choose and Define Your Topic

Spend some time thinking about how to formulate a reasonable topic from an area of general interest. Be sure you understand the assignment before you begin. If you have any doubts, write down what you think you need to do and discuss it with your instructor to confirm that you're on target.

Get Background Information

Become familiar with the ideas, major concepts and basic vocabulary in your chosen research area. Such background knowledge places your topic in a wider context, deepens your understanding and helps you feel more comfortable with it.
• Encyclopedias are a great place to get an overview of a topic that is new to you.
Encyclopedias often identify narrower areas within the broad subject, which may suggest a focus for your research. Many encyclopedia article entries also provide a list of references that can help you locate further, more in-depth and scholarly information sources.
• Work from general to specific.
If a general encyclopedia doesn't provide enough background information, continue your research with focused subject encyclopedias.
• Subject dictionaries can help define any unfamiliar words and specialized terminology when researching a new subject in specific disciplines.

Gather sources

Sources are generally categorized as being either records of what happened (primary), or reports and commentary compiled after the fact (secondary).
Primary sources include eyewitness accounts published in newspapers, thoughts and feelings recorded in diaries and letters, documented interviews or oral histories, and data collected in the census.

• Published material by prominent people, such as The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln or The Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., are also considered primary material.
Secondary sources offer commentary written about events "after the fact." Most published information (such as standard books and articles) falls into the secondary source category.
• Additional sources of information may complement what you find in books and articles, and include biographical sources, book reviews, statistics, geographical sources, essays, government publications and video documentaries. Statistical, geographical and other factual materials can really help to "make your case" by substantiating your points and arguments.

Tips for finding sources:

• During your research, pursue any useful footnotes, references, subject headings and keywords you find along the way. A good bibliography will suggest additional sources; conducting a search using the subject headings and keywords from one helpful item may lead you to others.
• Search for other works written by the same author(s). Scholars often become experts in a field and continue publishing on that topic.
• Look at the book shelves nearby for related works as you gather your information. Selective browsing often reveals materials that your systematic searches may have missed.
• Evaluate your source material at every point during the research process. Make sure that it adequately addresses your topic.

http://www.unca.edu/

Choose and define a topic

Process Summary

Research Strategy - checklist

1.Think of keywords or concepts to define your topic.

2.Find background information by looking up concepts in dictionaries, encyclopaedias, bibliographies, catalogues, etc.

3.Searc by Author, Title, Keyword(s), and Subjects for books, journals, audio-visual materials, exhibition catalogues, theses, government documents.

4.Search Art-related Indexes & Databases for appropriate journal articles.

5.Search for journal articles in interdisciplinary databases related to your topic.

6Analyze, and evaluate your sources, write and edit your paper, and not least, document your sources as you find them in order to compile your bibliography.

What is a Research Strategy?

A plan or scheme by which the activity of searching for and assessing information found is carried out. It gives direction to your efforts, enabling you to conduct research systematically rather than haphazardly, also can help you stay focused, reduce frustration, enhance the quality of your reserch and save your time in the long run.

Research is about discovering new ideas, actively thinking about and working with them. You may use existing information, but should draw your own conclusions, synthesize and integrate your own original ideas into the finished product.

Source_ Book 4

"In "Siteless: 1001 Building Forms," French architect Francois Blanciak surrenders the usual anchors of function and site for an exercise in pure form. His astoundingly imaginative 1,001 designs could challenge architects and engineers for decades." -- ""Santa Fe New Mexican""

This book offers an attempt to free architecture from site and program constraints and to counter the profusion of ever bigger architecture books with ever smaller content.Some may call it the first manifesto of the 21st century, for it lays down a new way to think about architecture. Others may think of it as the last architectural treatise, for it provides a discursive container for ideas that would otherwise be lost. Whatever genre it belongs to, "Siteless" is a new kind of architecture book that seems to have come out of nowhere. Its author, a young French architect practicing in Tokyo, admits he "didn't do this out of reverence toward architecture, but rather out of a profound boredom with the discipline, as a sort of compulsive reaction." What would happen if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program, and budget? he asks. The result is a book that is saturated with forms, and as free of words as any architecture book the MIT Press has ever published.The 1001 building forms in "Siteless" include structural parasites, chain link towers, ball bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing - and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved. "Siteless" presents an open-ended compendium of visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from.The forms, drawn freehand (to avoid software-specific shapes) but from a constant viewing angle, are presented twelve to a page, with no scale, order, or end to the series. After setting down 1001 forms in siteless conditions and embryonic stages, Blanciak takes one of the forms and performs a "scale test," showing what happens when one of these fantastic ideas is subjected to the actual constraints of a site in central Tokyo. The book ends by illustrating the potential of these shapes to morph into actual building proportions.