Unit Summary: REFLECTIONS

So our Reflections unit of History and Theory of Design began with the Origins of Modernism, which was a nice turn of events for me. Because as bad as it sounds I sometimes I have trouble focusing on past history, because it’ll tend to be boring in some circumstances which is never good. So modernism was something more current and I enjoyed it a bit more, but I did also enjoy the previous units. Lets just say it’s far better then Intro to Art and memorizing God knows how many artworks, that just gets plain boring! But yeah, the age of enlightenment as it was known... from 1720-1790, and  let’s just say it borrows on many past historical trends in design but the designers of the modern era definitely made it theirs. As Roth states, “the modern epoch is characterized by several encompassing trends, beginning with a worldwide shift away from centralized. authoritarian governance (whether monarchical or dictatorial) and a move toward democratic republics.” (Roth 439) Probably one of the next sections we dove into was the Arts and Crafts movement which was definitely a big deal, it was then and it still is in todays time. I’ve also learned that it’s what could be labeled as a “touchy subject” because it has grey areas per say. Industrialization led to this movement though because designers felt like the machine wasn’t something that needed to be praised, the preferred the rustic feel to unique rather then creating a identical copy of the same design. They liked the hand crafted quality and the feeling that went into it and the machine took that away from people, thus they rebelled out against it. We later looked somewhat into the English Free Architecture Movement which consisted of names such as Webb, Maddox, Mackmurdo, and Ashbee. A quote I took from Charles Ashbee said that “...we do not reject the machine. We welcome it. But we desire to see it mastered.” (Charles Ashbee) Our last day of the section we talked about Chicago and all I honestly remember is there is some story about a great fire in Chicago in 1871 and it destroyed pretty much the entire city and a few years later, it led to the development of a great, massive city. What structurally made such a grand city possible was the discovery of new materials such as iron, steel, and glass were the three vital components to your now day skyscrapers. But the exterior wasn’t the only thing that had significant changes made throughout, so did the interior of such structures. Inside there was a growing interest in privacy within a home and within a single room. Before these new materials your two forms to constructing a building was either stick construction or arch construction and this allowed for so many new, innovative techniques to be applied in a building. The principles that all this was based upon was a social change and a need for meaning. Romantic past was also very much so affiliated with this popular, life changing era and lastly they wanted the past to be studied. So this pretty much sums up the entire Reflections unit, now it’s on to Explorations and only like 2 more weeks left of school! Nerve racking I’d say!