Monday 29 October 2012

Inspirational Design


I finished my first module and submitted it for marking…..I surprised myself and got 100%.  Woohoo, I’m so happy to actually get something right as was worried my tutor would just send it back laughing with sympathy in his eyes and shaking his head at my dismal attempt to understand the rudiments of space, line, light, texture, balance, emphasis and scale etc. but no, I do understand these concepts a little.  Putting them into practice is a little trickier than understanding in principle.  That part is to come I hope further down the line when I have more of a foundation to stand on.

However, right now I love learning about Interior Design and there is more to it than meets the eye.  More than I originally thought and it takes me ages to finish a module because I don’t understand or know anything at the start but gradually it sinks in and I get the gist. This next module is all to do with the History of Style, Decoration and Architecture.   

I didn’t think about early cave dwellers with their carvings and drawings on cave walls as interior design or Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel come to mention it but this is the question I pose for myself now.  Is it?  I think so.  You know when I started thinking about what I wanted to do to make a transition from my old job to something new, Interior Design was the first thing that really got me excited.  I was a little concerned people might think of it as frippery silly decorating and chucking a few cushions around but it so is not that at all. 

There are some seriously good interior designers out there who have or who are shaping the world we sit in for the good.  It’s not just aesthetics, it’s how we feel, it’s how we live, it’s what we show others and what we don’t show about ourselves, it’s a culmination of historical influences that I expect a lot of people take for granted or don’t see (I didn’t) that guide our taste, it’s aspirational and inspirational and I love it. 

I was squizzing through the internet looking at various influential architects and designers and came across Frank Gehry…blimey has this man got vision.  Considered one of the best architects of our time and designed such places as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and The Dancing House in Prague to name but a few.
 
When I first looked at his designs I really didn’t like them but now I see the beauty.  They are spectacular actually and can only marvel at such talent in one man….check out his stuff http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/architecture/recent-work the thing is he not only concerns himself with the outside but also the inside and essentially obeys the principles and elements of design but with spectacular effect.    I think the same thing (almost) when I look at the inside of a Kit Kemp Hotel (Firmdale Hotels), beautiful spaces and cleverly, imaginatively and boldly designed.  I can hear people shrieking at me now….that I can’t compare THE most influential architect of our times to a hotel owner who designs her own interiors but I am in a way…it’s all design one way or another just different mediums and different materials.  Same as our cave dwelling ancestors who told a story they wanted to convey with the medium of the visual.
Staying with architecture for a moment I wonder what anyone thinks of this year’s RIBA Stirling Prize winner…..The Sainsbury Laboratory designed by Stanton & Williams (go check it out http://ribastirlingprize.architecture.com/)

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