1st Synopsis

04.10.09
P30600 Major Study _ 2009/2010

Roxanne Walters 08079090
Synopsis
Title : Imagineering Civilisations
Sub-title : Inference and Impossibility : a design inquiry towards an ethnological architecture
to innovate a new model of Heritage Centre which champions global civilizations

Statement of research problem
The “Creative Industries” have been recognised by the incumbent British government as the extant key forces of the British and global economy. They have identified the Visual and Performing Arts, Music and Film Industries, Broadcasting, Digital and Print Media as the fundamental contemporary industries underpinning the Material economy. Therefore, these disciplines are increasingly the focus of government policy, private investment and academic research despite the current trend of Market Failure and the spectre of recession. This fact is especially important as it is reported that Digital Media capabilities are a primary source of economic development still shaping contemporary cultural experience and identity, informing social change, and influencing international relations and communication.

As such, the needs of the ‘Artisan’ continue to exert great influence on Architecture, the economy and society. Not only in terms of the ‘grand gesture and iconic construct’ but in total architectonic response to adapt to the changing roles and needs of creative designers as their migratory labour transits affect and effect cultural regeneration - a phenomenon with greater pertinence in this time of economic decline. In any period of transition, society must form new roles of social and public life to ensure preservation. As social leaders - the role of the ‘Artisan’ to preserve, catalogue and advance social mores, ideals, cultural identities and artefacts are key to such periods of adjustment being achieved successfully.

As the world economies irrevocably change to meet the new financial future dawning as a result of the current universal credit crunch - there arises the inevitable re-defining of cultural values and norms.

This premise underpins my continued design research investigation to initiate unique responses to meet the needs of the ‘Artisan’ which oftimes lay between the tension of Architectural paradox and conundrum. I continue to be interested in Creative and Cultural Theories, Creative Industries and the Material Economy and how these relate to architecture. There now exists a need to identify the dynamics that will shape a reflexive model of cultural renewal in the context of the inevitable re-definition of cultural values and norms arising from the shifting global economy and the resultant emerging new world order catalysed by the current recession. A primary hypothesis posits that an understanding of the intrinsic factors of financial trends and humanism, combined with a knowledge of media, economic growth and communications theories would underpin an emergent architectural model which would facilitate a primary embryonic way of appropriating culture.

This presumption also predicates an attempt to seek to address the predicaments of culture technics and habitation, championing a catalyst for urban community; thereby achieving the common goal of survival, proliferation and propagation. Therefore, the proposed period of research will identify the dynamics of cultural renewal in the context of the inevitable re-definition of cultural values and norms arising from the shifting global economy and the resultant emerging new world order catalysed by the current recession. Conjecturing the creation of a hub, “a design village” where the Artisan will study, live and work as a way to encourage and diversify the approach to sustaining Heritage. To tangibly connect the present and the future with the past. To promote a learning and understanding of a by-gone culture through adoption and adaptation whereby the culture can continue to grow and evolve rather than stagnate. Thereby, transforming culture into the exotic of phenomenon. Transmuting culture into objects of art and translating them into key elements of cultural identification.

In the context of an increasingly homogenised world, the technique of intercultural mimesis is inverted and devolved into a system of trans-cultural differentiation. That is, the museum typology as it is now known is currently the best repository to experience culture but this event is typically characteristic of the remote. There now precipitates the need to stimulate a new architectural response to deal with the ‘credit crunch’, allowing an immersive environment to appropriate culture.

The research will be directed towards a model typology that tests the feasibility of new mechanisms for the redemption of the Artisan using selected case studies. Special attention will be paid to local/regional variations in how different creative industries function vis-à-vis business and cultural policies, globalization, and the strategic role of creativity in future competitiveness. This may be a primary strategy to retain the strong social and political influence of the Artisan instead of the present dissemination. Instead of currently sustaining the irrevocable monetary and cultural losses of the Artisan output

Imagineering architecture can be an appropriate strategy to root society to its past and culture to tacitly re-engage the individual with the person and the personal in this era of market failure and transition in government and financial systems amid continued globalisation.

Revolutionising culture into objects of art and key elements of cultural identification; creating culturally affirmative archives potentially is a primary method of effecting continued and sustained socio- economic development. Just like the “World Exhibitions” and the “Little Worlds” of Japan were to bridge the gap between rapidly expanding industrialisation and the cyclic, reflexive model of cultural renewal in the context of classical humanism.

What, therefore, is the new ‘World Pavilion” for the 22nd C after the global bear market?

To consider the proposed architectural direction of designing an interactive, immersive environment in response to the above question, this dissertation will encompass the preparation of drawings and real artefacts for contemplation.

Preoccupations of abstraction, reduction, the tactile and the spiritual connection between metaphysical and landscape (linking the old with the new – the joining of the proposed built artefact and the sea) will guide this design exercise to initiate an ethnologically immersive model for a Heritage Centre in Barbados. By taking the opportunity to investigate the direct need for the Bajan society as broadcast by the Barbadian government to preserve the history of the peoples who are the indigenous ancestors of the island and whose descendants and culture is still alive but remote from Contemporary Bajan society.

This design exercise for Barbados would be analogous for the global need to ‘house the Artisan’. That is, the popular encyclopaedia of mankind - the Artisans (Amerindians), aim to reconnect the modern world (Barbados) to its cultural origins (Amerindians) as an effort to reconnect modern civilisation caught in the throes of credit crunch and recession and the realities of a shifting global economy, back to its origins and cultural roots and as a healing or pointing the way forward for civilisation to move beyond its present difficulties, return to human experience and engage people. The case study of Barbados would therefore be the microscope to evaluate what can be done at the global scale. In this scenario, like the Japanese, the Barbadian artisans adopt the culture of the Amerindians and the treatment of their traditional craft of pottery and shell design (tool making and jewellery) reinterpreting it as for their own contemporary identity and language.

I am optimistic that at the end of this exercise, it would promote reflection on the underpinning [political] approach taken in future masterplanning regeneration exercises in the world’s cities in general. So as to preserve the built environment for those most affected – the residents; and guard against the causality of homogenised urban grain at the expense of unique territorial character.

This research is leading me to think that a smart city like what Richard Florida proposes - an interactive community -rather than a remote entity is an interesting idea to promote for an architecture that encompasses the creative industries and act as the new cultural signifier for this era in the shift of the production of arts, culture and the economy.

Hyper-realism – the imaginery depicted by highly realistic representation