{"id":261,"date":"2015-07-04T19:46:38","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T18:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darrenumney.com\/blog\/?p=261"},"modified":"2016-03-15T15:26:04","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T15:26:04","slug":"creating-a-design-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"Creating a design space"},"content":{"rendered":"

The machinations and refinery\u00a0of academia can\u00a0sometimes be overwhelming. This can provoke\u00a0a\u00a0paralysis of analysis, but perhaps\u00a0in a slightly earlier phase than the term’s application to, for example,\u00a0public policy debate. A strategy, the success of which remains to be seen, is to attempt to engage in other activities alongside that of the PhD\u00a0life and to use them to help to\u00a0crash through the self imposed barriers to analytic clarity and academic conclusion.<\/p>\n

In “normal” universities one may find oneself teaching on undergraduate courses – exercising and exploring contextual arenas\u00a0while at the same time building up collateral self-confidence in one’s abilities to think and do\u00a0and\u00a0teach and learn. At institutions where students are not present this is not an option and so one must be creative – write a blog maybe, or sign up for every conference going, or slip away to a more lively corner of the globe should the opportunity arise.<\/p>\n

As a fine art graduate I should be hard wired for firing up some creative pathways. Pathways that might\u00a0help to get through the more testing aspects of pulling together an argument that can be sustained throughout a thesis and then defended against unknown assailants in the guise of a viva.<\/p>\n

This post is about one of the additional projects I’m working on and my attempts to draw, if only through a bare exegesis of its existence, \u00a0some academic capital out of it\u00a0in order to make it\u00a0work as \u00a0intended – as a useful subsidiary project that cross-pollinate with the thesis.<\/p>\n

Here is a\u00a0recent image. a sample of an Ordnance Survey map of Milton Keynes showing one of the early social housing projects commissioned by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation.<\/p>\n

\"Coffee<\/a>
Coffee Hall, Gold and Barker, 1973-1977 Reproduced by permission of Ordnance\u00a0Survey on behalf of HMSO \u00a9 Crown Copyright. All rights reserved.\u00a0Architect attributions from Pevsner, N. (1994). Buckinghamshire. London: Penguin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

This image works for me on several levels. Aesthetically it can be read in any number of ways that I won’t elucidate – you can make up your own. Historically it represents, along with the 20 other similar images I have made, a story from my childhood where layers of memories, family structures and understandings of the world were\u00a0transformed, eroded, superimposed and forgotten. Did I say just in my childhood? Politically it recalls the idealism, isolation and eventual demise of the post war settlement. And so on. Here’s\u00a0what sixteen of them look like together:<\/p>\n

\"vitrine<\/a><\/p>\n

The work provides for numerous layers of interpretation and its production is intended to\u00a0keep the creative kaleidoscope turning. The fluid approach that this kind of self-determined art production allows must then\u00a0flow back onto the process of writing a thesis. The alternative, to be avoided, is that the interpretation of parliamentary debate and the parallel\u00a0exploration\u00a0of aspects of design theory, become a tinderbox of dry and crumbling leaves rather than a part of the tree of knowledge.<\/p>\n

A selection of these images are currently installed at the\u00a0Milton Keynes Gallery as part of its MK Calling exhibition<\/a>. Meanwhile, a\u00a0creative reading of parliamentary data may draw\u00a0connections between the way politicians call upon different perspectives and precedents that identify and navigate\u00a0a space between numerous definitions and refinements of the problems and solutions of High Speed Rail: what might come to be seen as their\u00a0design space. These precedents can be\u00a0isolated, much like Coffee Hall in the image above, but then\u00a0a\u00a0design can be\u00a0observed, or extruded, around the edges, sending out grid roads in every direction in search of the\u00a0way home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The machinations and refinery\u00a0of academia can\u00a0sometimes be overwhelming. This can provoke\u00a0a\u00a0paralysis of analysis, but perhaps\u00a0in a slightly earlier phase than the term’s application to, for example,\u00a0public policy debate. A strategy, the success of which remains to be seen, is to attempt to engage in other activities alongside that of the PhD\u00a0life and to use them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenumney.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}