Joana Albernaz Delgado
Bio
Urban Planning Lawyer turned Design Historian. I am interested in connections between different scales of design, going from the city to the architecture and the object. My recent work, focusing on cantilever chairs, televisions and museum benches, uses mixed media approaches to challenge dominant historical narratives about 20th century design.
Urban Planning Lawyer turned Design Historian. I am interested in connections between different scales of design, going from the city to the architecture and the object. My recent work, focusing on cantilever chairs, televisions and museum benches, uses mixed media approaches to challenge dominant historical narratives about 20th century design.
Research Project
De-scribing Museum Seats: Design and Art in the V&A’s Raphael Cartoons Galleries
My work looks at embedded messages and meanings in museum seats to reveal a different angle on how museums see their collections and themselves in different times.
Keywords
Material Culture, Modern, Contemporary, Europe, Built Environment, Applied Arts, Interior Space, Museum Studies
De-scribing Museum Seats: Design and Art in the V&A’s Raphael Cartoons Galleries
My work looks at embedded messages and meanings in museum seats to reveal a different angle on how museums see their collections and themselves in different times.
Keywords
Material Culture, Modern, Contemporary, Europe, Built Environment, Applied Arts, Interior Space, Museum Studies
Unknown author, The Raphael Room at the South Kensington Museum, London. Illustrated Times, 7 October 1865.
Museum seating has been an invisible subject to many. Its unobtrusiveness is usually part of its script, but it also reveals how the ‘material culture of everyday life’ of the museum world has been undervalued by historians and researchers. My dissertation aims to bring the history of museum seating to the fore by placing it within broader narratives of museum history and museum studies, finding it a ‘seat’ between the history of display and the history of viewing and experiencing.
Using the V&A’s Raphael Galleries – Gallery 94 and the succeeding Gallery 48a –, my dissertation seeks to know what museum seating can tells us about the way the V&A has been ‘framing’ the Raphael Cartoons, and, ultimately, what does that reveal about how the museum has been positioning itself in different times.
![John Chillingworth, The Art Of Love, 1954, London, A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress, Picture Post no. 7114, 1954 (via Getty Images).]()
John Chillingworth, The Art Of Love, 1954, London, A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress, Picture Post no. 7114, 1954 (via Getty Images).
Using the V&A’s Raphael Galleries – Gallery 94 and the succeeding Gallery 48a –, my dissertation seeks to know what museum seating can tells us about the way the V&A has been ‘framing’ the Raphael Cartoons, and, ultimately, what does that reveal about how the museum has been positioning itself in different times.
John Chillingworth, The Art Of Love, 1954, London, A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress, Picture Post no. 7114, 1954 (via Getty Images).
The methodology guiding this project draws upon Madeleine Akrich’s thesis on script analysis. Script analysis makes objects talk, revealing their inner ‘manual of instructions’. Indeed, museum seats have embedded messages that condition the way visitors experience museums.
In my project, the message inscribed by museums and the message that the seats effectively irradiate are more important than the script devised by furniture designers. Museums shape meaning, sometimes partially unconsciously, by interrelating architecture, space, objects, furniture and visitors. By using specific seats in specific locations, museums act like authors of a broader semantic and geographical script. Methodologically, my work ‘de-scribes’ (using Akrich’s terminology) museum seats in the Raphael Galleries, unpacking their script in context, to unveil the way the V&A has been framing the Cartoons. The ‘de-scription’ flows within a pictorial journey in time between 1865 and 2021 that reveals the evolution of museum seats in dialogue with space, objects and subjects in the Raphael Galleries.
Considering the lack of consistent primary sources about exhibition design decision processes and about visitors’ experience within such a long period of time, script analysis allows the extraction of primary information from the most stable sources available: material culture, covering visual evidence and, whenever possible, the museum seats themselves.
My investigation concludes that the Raphael Cartoons have been presented by the V&A in a dual, albeit non equal, form, which has fluctuated in time between displaying them as art or design objects. The pendular movement that embodies the presentation of the Cartoons is in itself an image of the way the V&A has been shaping its identity as an art and design museum, revealing how both the Cartoons and the museum have been symbiotically evolving over time.
In my project, the message inscribed by museums and the message that the seats effectively irradiate are more important than the script devised by furniture designers. Museums shape meaning, sometimes partially unconsciously, by interrelating architecture, space, objects, furniture and visitors. By using specific seats in specific locations, museums act like authors of a broader semantic and geographical script. Methodologically, my work ‘de-scribes’ (using Akrich’s terminology) museum seats in the Raphael Galleries, unpacking their script in context, to unveil the way the V&A has been framing the Cartoons. The ‘de-scription’ flows within a pictorial journey in time between 1865 and 2021 that reveals the evolution of museum seats in dialogue with space, objects and subjects in the Raphael Galleries.
Considering the lack of consistent primary sources about exhibition design decision processes and about visitors’ experience within such a long period of time, script analysis allows the extraction of primary information from the most stable sources available: material culture, covering visual evidence and, whenever possible, the museum seats themselves.
My investigation concludes that the Raphael Cartoons have been presented by the V&A in a dual, albeit non equal, form, which has fluctuated in time between displaying them as art or design objects. The pendular movement that embodies the presentation of the Cartoons is in itself an image of the way the V&A has been shaping its identity as an art and design museum, revealing how both the Cartoons and the museum have been symbiotically evolving over time.
Watch
Symposium Presentation ︎︎︎
The Design of Methodology Panel︎︎︎
In Addition
Talking seats: A visual celebration of museum benches
Shannon Finnegan has been designing museum benches for different art spaces since 2018. The series, called ‘Do you want us here or not’, is a poignant response to the lack of seating in museums, a form of seated protest that they shape with words written in all caps on the benches themselves. ‘I’D RATHER BE SITTING. SIT IF YOU AGREE.’, or ‘IT WAS HARD TO GET HERE. REST HERE IF YOU AGREE.’ are two examples of how they use museum benches as art, focusing on the frequently invisible disabled audience.
Although my research does not focus on accessibility or museum fatigue, I borrowed inspiration from Finnegan’s benches to celebrate my own work on the history of museum seating. Using photographs taken at the V&A, these visual snippets embody some of my conclusions about the power of museum seats and their historical importance. Museum seats convey a specific script on how visitors should experience museums, and therefore they also reveal how museums see their own collections and themselves. Here, they are a graphic expression of my thoughts, an encounter between content and shape, substance and form.
Museum seats irradiate, but they also absorb. They are often covered with scribbles, doodles and scratches, layers of deliberate damage carved through the decades. These visual musings also pay tribute to the rich, albeit hard life of museum seating. They do not intend to praise vandalism and mischief. By inscribing my conclusions on these benches, I intend to acknowledge museum seats as repositories of memories and material instruments of a primary human need to be remembered, to leave a mark, to make an indent. They are also, in their own way, wonderful witnesses of the relationship between humans, their history and their past.
Cyrienne Buffet
Bio
I am a creative designer and historian of design with a strong interest for meaningful user centred design. Versatile, my design practice has tangibility and user experience at its core . Always curious,intuitive problem solver, conscientious and thorough - with a good dose of common sense, I am a fast learner with a brain full of ideas who aim for designing meaningful solutions for today and tomorrow.
Research Project
Digital Childhood:
From Self-experience to E-xperience Digital technology Ideologies and Design process of a pedagogy of interaction.
This research focuses on offering a voice through interviews to the designers of digital technology for children.
Keywords
Material Culture, Contemporary, Europe, Technologies, Methods of Documentation, Oral Histories, Untold / Marginalised Narratives
llustration by Pawel KuczynskiThe time spent by children on digital technologies combined with the accelerating effect of their introduction into the educational sphere brought by the Covid-19 pandemic has raised anxiety and reluctance towards the said technologies. Through academic studies and popular discourses, it is understood that the principal reason behind this anxiety is due to parents feeling outdated by the rapid technological innovations thus leading to a loss of control on the exposure of their children to digital technology and its security and privacy risks. Teachers are reluctant to the introduction of digital technologies within the educational system as they feel assisted, replaced or overwhelmed by the new skills required to handle them. This raising anxiety has conducted several governments to develop laws and restrictions concerning the usage of digital technology within the home and the education. Based on the research question: How do designers respond to technological anxiety while supporting and incorporating a pedagogy of learning through child-focused technology in their practice?
This dissertation examines how the children of the current generation, referred as digital natives, raises the attention on the lasting impact of technology on future generations. Through the study of a range of scientific research and various testimonies and in order to answer the research question, this dissertation uncovers significant ideologies divergences. Digital technology is first considered to cause the learner to be de-trained rather than trained, to be distributed, dispersed and disseminated. Secondly a positive impact on learning through the development of new skills via digital technology is considered. The decisive contributions of Montessori and Dewey through the introduction of active learning pedagogy influence on finding a new fields of application for the notions of self-learning, tangibility and interaction via the creation of tangible digital learning technologies by designers and researchers. Thus bringing forward the emergence of a new sector of design: interaction design. In a broader context this dissertation advocates for the necessity of incorporating digital technology history to the field of design history where academic scholarship on the subject are lacking.
Cubetto is a robot controlled by a tangible programming language that allows children to develop computational thinking skills. Image taken from FINH website
From by product design background to my final work as a history of design student my work has always gravitated around creating for and with children.
My dissertation research is driven by an interest in material histories within child driven design, and the introduction of digital technologies and edutainment, through design, at home and at school.Across my research project I focused on understanding how design history can account for offering a voice to designers responding to technological anxiety by incorporating educational concepts into their designs. Direct dialogue through interviews with Bruno Schillinger from KANO and Filippo Yacob from FINH as been key to the success of collecting new material. This allowed me to give a voice to the makers of the said technology, voice forgotten in secondary literature and History of Design.
My dissertation research is driven by an interest in material histories within child driven design, and the introduction of digital technologies and edutainment, through design, at home and at school.Across my research project I focused on understanding how design history can account for offering a voice to designers responding to technological anxiety by incorporating educational concepts into their designs. Direct dialogue through interviews with Bruno Schillinger from KANO and Filippo Yacob from FINH as been key to the success of collecting new material. This allowed me to give a voice to the makers of the said technology, voice forgotten in secondary literature and History of Design.
Building the Kano PC. Credits: Kano
Victoria Bennett
Bio
Victoria is an archivist and design historian, with a professional background in paper-based and photographic collections. At the heart of Victoria's research interests are themes of sustainability and gentleness, and her research on Japan's historic paper objects through her MA will be continued in Tokyo from September 2022.
Research Project
From Leather Pouches to Golden Walls: The Creation of ‘Japanese Leather Papers’ (1862-1892)
Exploring Japan's history of making 'leather' from paper, and how this became an object of modernity within the domestic interiors of Victorian Britain.
Keywords
Material Culture, Modern, Europe, Asia, Applied Arts, Technologies, Interior Space, Natural Objects
Victoria Bennett, Experiments In Reconstructing Leather-Paper, 2022. © Victoria On first thought, the idea of Japanese wallpapers designed to imitate golden, embossed ‘Spanish’ leathers for the drawing rooms and libraries of middle-class Britain appears to be another example of eclectic Victorian novelty. Japanese Leather Papers, as they were known, were brimming with cultural capital - exuding exoticism, artistry, and ‘good taste’ at a time of booming interest in domestic design. Although the fashion for these wall-hangings lasted a relatively short time - around seventeen years in Britain from 1883 - the peak of demand saw thousands of rolls being shipped to London every month, appearing in high-profile interiors including Buckingham Palace, alongside those designed by Oscar Wilde, Christopher Dresser, and E.W. Godwin. Despite this, they remain a lesser-known area of late-nineteenth century history.
Typically gilded and often garish, the motifs of this imitation-leather span flora and fauna to repeating geometric designs. A single-coloured ground provides a backdrop for embossed foliage, festoon, or brocade patterns, and the papers were hailed by design journals as the solution to finally tying a Japanese-themed room together. Consumers were thrilled at the prospect of a hygienic, washable wallpaper which had been artfully hand-painted – a signifier of both modernity and tradition.
Typically gilded and often garish, the motifs of this imitation-leather span flora and fauna to repeating geometric designs. A single-coloured ground provides a backdrop for embossed foliage, festoon, or brocade patterns, and the papers were hailed by design journals as the solution to finally tying a Japanese-themed room together. Consumers were thrilled at the prospect of a hygienic, washable wallpaper which had been artfully hand-painted – a signifier of both modernity and tradition.
Here, the company Rottmann Strome & Co. is identified by scholars as the main supplier of the papers to Europe, with established factories in Tokyo and Yokohama employing a workforce of 150 ‘artists’, and a showroom in the City of London.
Japanese Leather Papers make an interesting subject of study. Not quite an object of Japonisme due to British supervision, but often seen as too exotic for an average interior, the papers can be understood as a transnational object, simultaneously European and East Asian. How did a small souvenir item along Japan’s Ise Kaido evolve to become a symbol of modernity within the British domestic interior? Was this a culmination of traditional European design and Japanese production methods, or an intriguing oddity?
Japanese Leather Papers make an interesting subject of study. Not quite an object of Japonisme due to British supervision, but often seen as too exotic for an average interior, the papers can be understood as a transnational object, simultaneously European and East Asian. How did a small souvenir item along Japan’s Ise Kaido evolve to become a symbol of modernity within the British domestic interior? Was this a culmination of traditional European design and Japanese production methods, or an intriguing oddity?
Illustration of Drawing Room, Decorated With Rottmann Strome & Co.'s Japanese Leather Papers. Printed in the first Journal of Decorative Arts with colour plates, 1884. © Caroline Simpson Collection, Sydney Living Museum.
Reverse of Embossed Leather Panel Sent From Britain To Tokyo As A Model For Leather-Paper Wallpapers, c. 1879. © Victoria & Albert Museum.
Victoria Bennett, Leather-Paper Experiments_ Examples Of Kakishibu Application On Colour And Texture (from clockwise_ one, two, and three applications), 2022. © Victoria Bennett.
Workers of Rottmann & Co.'s 'Japanese Leather Paper' Factory Applying Ground Colour, Tokyo c. 1890. © Victoria & Albert Museum.
In Addition
Victoria currently works as Digitisation Manager at the Courtauld Institute of Art. During her MA, Victoria oversaw various external archival projects, such as World Architecture Unlocked, and Lightyears: The Photographers' Gallery at 50.
Archival practice underpins much of Victoria's historic research, in which records (or lack thereof) can be seen to influence how objects are remembered and contextualised, and the differences of physical and digital objects within this.
For her historiographical essay, Victoria explored the difficulty of archiving/recording digital algorithmic platforms - using Instagram as an example. Her object essay then examined an item in the V&A with no prior cataloguing information: a Japanese Shinto paper fox mask from the late-nineteenth century, which she sought to re-contextualise - tracing this back to an annual matsuri performance in Nagasaki.
Finding a wealth of traditional knowledge in Japan's paper-making of this period, Victoria continued this research for her dissertation - exploring the history of paper-based 'leather' (gikakushi + kinkarakawakami) as an object of soft power in Japan’s Meiji period, and its integral material component kakishibu (persimmon tannin) - studying a historic formula for its practical application and scent properties.
Website
hello@victoriabennett.co.uk
Zhenlei Chen
Research Project
The Transcultural Values of Flower Pyramid - The Cultural Values of Dutch Delftware and its use in the UK Country House Between the Seventeenth to the Eighteenth Century
My dissertation focuses on the transcultural values, shifting values, function, aesthetic, political, and culture of the collection of Delftware Dutch flower pyramid in country houses.
Keywords
Material Culture, Early Modern, Europe, Applied Arts, Methods of Documentation, Conservation, Transcultural Values
Illustration 1, Dyrham Park, Zhenlei Chen, (Accessed: 17 November 2021)
The ceramic products circumambient of us define us as well. The moment they are shaped by potters and decorated by painters, they manifest the culture that gives birth to them. Whether they are unique artworks or mass-produced tableware, their shapes and decorations are indicative of the demands, interests and tastes of a particular group of people and their technical merit. As a matter of fact, ceramic products are employed to decorate our houses and take on various forms including as a commodity, gift, souvenir or inheritance. Such designed objects tell us who we are, including our interest, experiences, educational background and social relations. Every object in our house has a story explaining how it got there, and design history helps us to think about this in new ways. In defect of recording and sharing, it is commonplace for these histories to disappear with each new owner. Suppose history is equal to a collection of human events, ceramics are silent witnesses.
The origin of the author’s topic is a Flower pyramid ca.1695 form the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum archive records show that after the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China in 1644, Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) did not have access to Chinese porcelains anymore, which urged potters in Delft to imitate blue-and-white potteries. In mansions in the Netherlands and England, suchlike stacked flower stands were used to display tulips and other natural or artificial flowers.
These potteries were large in size, complicated in structure and high in production cost. The flower pyramid vase is one of the pair, with a base supported by four royal lions with a ball on their palms. The square flower stand consists of nine layers, with each corner having a spout, and another flower stand contains a female bust. Each layer of the flower stand can be filled with water, and each spout can be used to contain flowers. What is more, there are holes on the top of corolla so that more flowers can be placed.
At the end of the sixteenth century, tulip fever swept over the Netherlands. To meet this demand, the craftsmen of Delft, especially the Greek A factory, manufactured gigantic receptacles to decorate pyramids. They were normally made in pairs, and were highly decorative in palaces and country house with or without flowers. To be noted, they are particularly prevalent among courtiers of William Hendrick Van Orange in England. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word ‘pyramid’ refers to obelisk. Standing for eternity and dominance, they are used in buildings and public spaces and function as temporary structures for celebration in gardens. This thesis intends to concentrate on the Dutch Delftware flower pyramid, starting with the history and the story of Dutch Delftware as a starting point. After the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China in 1644, Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) did not have access to Chinese porcelains anymore, which urged potters in Delft to imitate blue-and-white potteries. In mansions in the Netherlands and England, suchlike stacked flower stands were used to display tulips and other natural or artificial flowers, bringing nature indoors. These potteries were large in size, complicated in structure and high in production cost. This dissertation is especially interested in the collection of Delftware flower pyramid in country houses, and what is the transcultural values, shifting values, function, aesthetic, political, and culture of the Dutch flower pyramid. In order to answer these it focuses on a key case study are the Delftware flower pyramid at the Dyrham park and uses both secondary and primary research especially focus on the archive research as its methodology.
The origin of the author’s topic is a Flower pyramid ca.1695 form the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum archive records show that after the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China in 1644, Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) did not have access to Chinese porcelains anymore, which urged potters in Delft to imitate blue-and-white potteries. In mansions in the Netherlands and England, suchlike stacked flower stands were used to display tulips and other natural or artificial flowers.
These potteries were large in size, complicated in structure and high in production cost. The flower pyramid vase is one of the pair, with a base supported by four royal lions with a ball on their palms. The square flower stand consists of nine layers, with each corner having a spout, and another flower stand contains a female bust. Each layer of the flower stand can be filled with water, and each spout can be used to contain flowers. What is more, there are holes on the top of corolla so that more flowers can be placed.
At the end of the sixteenth century, tulip fever swept over the Netherlands. To meet this demand, the craftsmen of Delft, especially the Greek A factory, manufactured gigantic receptacles to decorate pyramids. They were normally made in pairs, and were highly decorative in palaces and country house with or without flowers. To be noted, they are particularly prevalent among courtiers of William Hendrick Van Orange in England. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word ‘pyramid’ refers to obelisk. Standing for eternity and dominance, they are used in buildings and public spaces and function as temporary structures for celebration in gardens. This thesis intends to concentrate on the Dutch Delftware flower pyramid, starting with the history and the story of Dutch Delftware as a starting point. After the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China in 1644, Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) did not have access to Chinese porcelains anymore, which urged potters in Delft to imitate blue-and-white potteries. In mansions in the Netherlands and England, suchlike stacked flower stands were used to display tulips and other natural or artificial flowers, bringing nature indoors. These potteries were large in size, complicated in structure and high in production cost. This dissertation is especially interested in the collection of Delftware flower pyramid in country houses, and what is the transcultural values, shifting values, function, aesthetic, political, and culture of the Dutch flower pyramid. In order to answer these it focuses on a key case study are the Delftware flower pyramid at the Dyrham park and uses both secondary and primary research especially focus on the archive research as its methodology.
Illustration 2, Dyrham Park, Zhenlei Chen, (Accessed: 17 November 2021)
Illustration 3, Dyrham Park, Zhenlei Chen, (Accessed: 17 November 2021)
Polina Davydova
Bio
I’m a Design Historian studying Soviet and Post-Soviet lived environments with a particular focus on vernacular and non-centralised modifications of the socialist mass-housing. Alongside that, my other academic interests include: digital world in times of conflict and virtual activism.
Research Project
Death of the Soviet Dream: the
My research is a micro-historical exploration of transformations in the lived environment of a Soviet district, Troparevo-Nikulino in Moscow.
Keywords
Material Culture, Contemporary, Europe, Asia, Built Environment, Interior Space, Oral Histories, Lived Experience
Death of the Soviet Dream: the
Evolution of Troparevo-Nikulino from the 1980s to the 1990s
My research is a micro-historical exploration of transformations in the lived environment of a Soviet district, Troparevo-Nikulino in Moscow.
Keywords
Material Culture, Contemporary, Europe, Asia, Built Environment, Interior Space, Oral Histories, Lived Experience
Fig.1: This is a contemporary satellite image of the administrative boundaries of Troparevo- Nikulino. The section outlined with blue is Troparevo (built 1963-1974), the section in red shows the Olympic Village (built 1977-1980, approximately 13,000 residents), and the yellow part is Nikulino (built 1980-1982).
This MA dissertation is a micro-historical exploration of transformations in the lived environment of a Soviet district, Troparevo-Nikulino in Moscow. The study is placed within two decades from the 1980s to the 1990s when Soviet Russia was coming out of Zastoi and into Perestroika and subsequently moved into the ‘wild 1990s’. Oral history is adopted as a primary method for historical investigation, and recollections from four district’s residents are the main source of primary evidence for this study. The interviews used in this project are unique and were specifically crafted for the purposes of this dissertation. They facilitate a greater understanding of the district as a whole and explore specific design changes deemed characteristic of the period in question.
The thesis will aim to understand the main reasoning behind the alterations people performed to the front doors and balconies through these conversations. In particular, it will focus on the Soviet sheathed faux-leather doors, the metal doors of the 1990s, and the now pervasive glazed balconies.
The thesis will aim to understand the main reasoning behind the alterations people performed to the front doors and balconies through these conversations. In particular, it will focus on the Soviet sheathed faux-leather doors, the metal doors of the 1990s, and the now pervasive glazed balconies.
Alongside exploring why people altered their homes in these ways, it will attempt to place these common modifications into the broader historical context, trying to understand whether these design changes were a continuation of existing traditions or if the transformations were caused by the shifts in the more extensive political landscape.
“Soviet balconies can be interpreted as markers of a particular kind of gaze that is quite definitive of the late Soviet society.”
Fig.2: This image of Olympic Village housing comes from the main Soviet architectural journal Arhitektura SSSR. This close up shot of the balconies shows their structural organisation and positioning.
Fig.3: The contemporary Google Street View image of the Olympic Village. Most of the balconies are now glazed and fully enclosed. This particular building is facing a courtyard, which no cars are allowed to drive through.
Soviet balconies can be interpreted as markers of a particular kind of gaze that is quite definitive of the late Soviet society. The sense of belonging and the overarching idea of not deviating from existing norms were integral parts of Soviet people’s everyday reality. In this sense the new balconies occupy a peculiar intermediate position.
On one hand, they could be read as signifiers of the newly obtained freedoms, and in some senses they represent people’s responses to the faults in the initial building design that created a semi- usable space which did not adapt to the transformations of the surrounding reality. On the other hand, this modification became so widespread, that it is fair to assume that some people might have enclosed their outside spaces without any particularly pressing issues pushing them towards such renovation.
On one hand, they could be read as signifiers of the newly obtained freedoms, and in some senses they represent people’s responses to the faults in the initial building design that created a semi- usable space which did not adapt to the transformations of the surrounding reality. On the other hand, this modification became so widespread, that it is fair to assume that some people might have enclosed their outside spaces without any particularly pressing issues pushing them towards such renovation.
This broader assumptions suggests another way of looking at these glazed balconies. One can suggest, that the Soviet apprehension with the belonging to the existing normalcy might have reinstated itself in this new context of the balcony glazing. At first, it was only a few people who felt the need to enclose their private outside spaces, and others followed once they started seeing more and more glazed balconies appearing on the facades of their home buildings. These new balconies manifested the transformation of what is normal, and the people gazing up their neighbours’ flats decided to reinstate their own bond with this new normal.
In this light, the balconies from the Soviet past are gazed upon not for signs of any visible deviation, but by those who are witnessing that this normality is going through a transformation. Now people's gazes were met with the new reality, and the people gazing up these blocks of flats decided to reinstate their own bond with this new normal through a continued act of conformation.
In this light, the balconies from the Soviet past are gazed upon not for signs of any visible deviation, but by those who are witnessing that this normality is going through a transformation. Now people's gazes were met with the new reality, and the people gazing up these blocks of flats decided to reinstate their own bond with this new normal through a continued act of conformation.
Watch
Symposium Presentation ︎︎︎
Symposium Presentation ︎︎︎