Point: Explorations

            As this semester comes to an end, the time has arrived to come clean. I’ve never been a huge history buff. The information just never seems to stick and I find it difficult to recognize relationships between one of the time periods to the next. This semester’s class for me was a bit of a challenge because of this. Majority of our assignments, such as these points and our counterpoints, were meant to help us make comparisons and connections to the past lessons and methods we’ve learned. How can I achieve that if I find it difficult to come across these assessments? I will say that my fellow classmates were a huge help. A simple conversation or short discussion was usually what I needed to steer my thought process in the right direction. I would also like to thank Patrick for making this experience an enjoyable one. Never have I experienced a teacher with so much enthusiasm and fondness of a particular subject. I learned that in every class, expect the unexpected.

Our last section was entitled Explorations. If ever there was a disregard for the regurgitation of design ideas and methods, as well as, new rules and systems written, this was it by far. With all the information and visuals available to us as designers I can’t seem to understand why we’ve seem to become lazy in a sense. The artifacts, spaces, buildings and places being designed today, in this time we call modernism, don’t explore the knowledge we have from the past. The minimalism and simplicity are cop outs to what we are truly capable of. On every corner we’re surrounded by these cookie-cutter style homes that are merely stuck in a spot and described by the name “suburbia”; these homes that possess no personality or deep sense of importance.

The idea of commodity, firmness and delight are no longer in use. These new “modern” style spaces and objects ooze with delight and, with our technological knowledge, are as sturdy as a rock, but lack any sort of commodity. As a reminder; commodity referring to a specific use, firmness referring to the stability of a structure and delight referring to the overall feeling given by an artifact, space, building or place. Modernism has been described as sterile, cold and putting no thought into human beings. In class we discussed our crisis where it’s believe that design is no longer for everyone. Design has formed an eliteness intended for only certain people. The world is more interested in the individual rather than the interest of the community and because we have the power to transport goods and services from all over the world, we do it, and fill spaces with no consideration to themes. We collect items, whether they go together or not. Finally, because of this eliteness, our interest in individual vs. community and our collecting, there is no longer a specified proposed language, there is no “right way” of doing things and there’s a loss of design vocabulary. 

"Suicide by Modernism" -- Mark Kostabi (2005)

I chose this picture entitled “Suicide by Modernism” by Mark Kostabi because I feel it sums up how most people feel about this idea of modernism; where multiple ideas are thrown into one piece of work or the past ideas are left on the ground to fertilize the earth. Notice how the “old school” styles are in black and white laying on the ground while the colors and vibrancies are celebrated hovering over them. Hopefully one day, with our generation of designers, we can spin the design continuum back in the “right” direction.