A Life More Ordinary? TVAD Talk

With apologies to Dr Jessica Kelly for the title of this post (which I will explain below!) I wanted to share a snapshot of Jessica’s TVAD Talk research seminar yesterday for the TVAD Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire. This is reblogged from my research website graceleesmaffei.org 

Dr Kelly returned to the Hertfordshire to give a TVAD Talk having worked with us as a Lecturer in Critical and Cultural Studies for the BA Hons Fashion programme. While at Hertfordshire, Jessica kindly worked with me a co-curator of Writing Design: Object, Process, Discourse, Translation, the 2009 Design History Society conference, from which I edited Writing Design: Words and Objects as part of my Writing Design project.

Jessica left Hertfordshire ten years ago in 2009 after the conference, to take up a doctoral research position at our neighbours, Middlesex University, where she worked with supervisor David Heathcote on her PhD ‘“To Fan the Ardour of the Layman”: J. M. Richards, The Architectural Review and Discourses of Modernism in British Architecture, 1933-1972’. You can read the abstract of Jessica’s PhD here. In her thesis, Jessica reflected on Richards’ importance to the development of modern architecture in Britain, as an exponent of architectural criticism and the mediation of architecture and as a member of an extensive network of people involved in the architecture and media communities.

Since 2013, Jessica has worked at the University for the Creative Arts where she is currently Lecturer in Contextual & Theoretical Studies in the School of Communication Design at UCA Farnham. She is working on a research monograph developed from her PhD and contracted with Manchester University Press, Studies in Design and Material Culture book series so we can read more when the book is published in 2021.

I had previously heard Jessica speak about her research at the 2018 Design History Society annual conference, Design and Displacement, convened by Dr Sarah A. Lichtman at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City last September. For her TVAD Talk Jessica reflected on the development of her research since her time at Hertfordshire, focussed on the mediation of modern architecture in the mid-twentieth century. She outlined her work-in-progress, centred upon her monograph. In Jessica’s own words:

‘the book traces how architects and critics (in the AR and elsewhere) debated whether “public” opinion was something to be ignored, over ruled, negotiated with, placated or pandered to. The changing form and content of criticism offers a view into how Modern architects understood their work and conceived of their role in society.’

Jessica was clear that J.M. Richards believed that the public, meaning, for him, the middle class public, needed to be educated about architecture and needed guidance from architects and other experts and that the AR assisted in that effort. Richards’ views were influenced by the socialism of his wife Peggy Angus. His own influence waned, though, in the early 1970. In seeking to rehabilitate Richards’ reputation Jessica is conscious that his legacy was obscured by less diffident types, more colourful characters who dominated the discourse more readily. The title of my post is an attempt to capture this feeling.

Jessica’s TVAD Talk, which took place on Wed 27 March 1-2.30 pm, was filmed by Mikayla J. Laird and will be published on the University’s YouTube channel, Creative Arts playlist in due course.

Zoë Hendon 'Working at the Intersection of Archives and Practice’

Next week TVAD is hosting a TVAD Talk research seminar by external speaker Zoë Hendon, Head of Collections and Associate Professor, Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA), Middlesex University. Her TVAD Talk, entitled ‘Working at the Intersection of Archives and Practice’ will showcase her doctoral research in the context of her professional work at MoDA. Zoë’s talk will examine her approach to both:

the museum's collections from a design-historical perspective, and on the ways in which these collections inspire creative practice in the present. 

In this talk she will refer to various projects she has worked on in recent years, and reflect on where these different strands of thought are currently taking her. Zoë’s PhD ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward, the The Silver Studio Collection as heritage asset and educational resource, 1968-2018’ is registered with Middlesex University and is due for completion by end of 2019. The Silver Studio Collection

was a commercial design practice, which between 1880 and 1963 completed more than 20,000 schemes for items such as furnishing fabrics, wallpapers, tablecovers, rugs and carpets. The Studio answered the needs of its customers, who were retailers and manufacturers at all levels of the market. Many of its clients were mass producers and Silver Studio designs therefore found their way into numerous British homes.

Zoë’s recent publications arising from this project include:

• ‘The Silver Studio art reference collection’ Decorative Arts Society Journal 36 (2012): 65–81;
• The Silver Studio and the Art of Japan, Middlesex University: Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (2014);
• ‘Behind the Scenes at the Silver Studio : Rex Silver and the Hidden Mechanisms of Interwar Textile Design’ Architecture and Culture 6, 1 (2018): 61–80;
• and, with Dr Linda Sandino ‘Inspiration Examined:Towards a methodology’ Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education 17, 2 (2018): 135–50.
  
  
  
  
  
  The talk will be filmed by Mikayla Laird and will be published on the University of Hertfordshire’s YouTube channel in due course. Further TVAD Talks are listed on the TVAD Talks webpage and on the TVAD blog.

Research in the School of Creative Arts

The TVAD Research Group is just one of several research groups in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. Staff move freely between groups examining Contemporary Arts Practice, Design Research, Media Research and the Digital Hack Lab as well as TVAD. Read more about the groups on our website here: https://www.herts.ac.uk/apply/schools-of-study/creative-arts/creative-arts-research

Some of our researchers were interviewed last year about their work and its significance for a film made by Freddie Gerrard-Abbott with Jak Kimsey and Antoine Proust. This film introduces the research of Dr Dan Goodbrey, Dr Pat Simpson, Dr Silvio Carta, Kim Akass, Prof Marty St James, Dr Steven Adams, Prof Simeon Nelson and Prof Grace Lees-Maffei. Hear them talking about their research in this film:

Research in the School of Creative Arts: An Overview from School of Creative Arts on Vimeo.

Find out more about TVAD's researchers, including Dan Goodbrey, Pat Simpson, Silvio Carta, Steven Adams and Grace Lees-Maffei on the TVAD researcher profile pages here: Link

New Book Series: Cultural Histories of Design

Bloomsbury Publishing UK and Professors Grace Lees-Maffei and Kjetil Fallan are delighted to announce the launch of a new book series, Cultural Histories of Design. Cultural Histories of Design presents rigorous and original research on the role and significance of design in society and culture, past and present. From a vantage point at the heart of the humanities, the series explores design as the most significant manifestation of modern and contemporary culture. This series will offer an interdisciplinary approach to design, including, but not limited to, design history, cultural studies, history, art history, business history, history of technology, anthropology, material culture studies, archaeology, geography, sociology, media studies and visual culture studies. There is more information about the series on our webpage: https://www.bloomsbury.com/…/…/cultural-histories-of-design/

TVAD blog readers are warmly invited to join the editors and publisher at Bloomsbury’s offices at 50 Bedford Square, London on Thursday 25th January 2018 from 6pm until 7.30pm to celebrate the first two books in the series: Modern Asian Design, by Daniel Huppatz and Norman Bel Geddes: American Design Visionary, by Nicolas P Maffei. The series editors and authors will briefly introduce the series and launch titles and will be available for questions and discussions. Drinks will be served. Please RSVP by 15th December to claire.constable@bloomsbury.com 

International Open Access Week 2017

Next week is International Open Access Week. Colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire have devised a full week of activities related to #openaccess #OAWeekUH #OAWeek. The theme of the week is #OpenInOrderTo and my answer to that prompt is #OpenInOrderTo reach more readers, more easily.

Last week, I was interviewed by Jane Housham (Publisher, University of Hertfordshire Press), and filmed by Chris Dunkley, for a short film about Open Access publishing. The interview was based on the fact that my book, Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization was published as an open access book as well as in hardback in 2016 by Berghahn. The book is available as an entire pdf and the chapters are available as individual pdfs on the publishers' website. I co-edited this book with Professor Kjetil Fallan of the University of Oslo. Both of the editor's institutions - the University of Oslo and the University of Hertfordshire - contributed funds to Berghahn to support the open access book.

You can watch the film on Youtube and hear more about my experience of open access publishing. Although the initial impact has not been as great as I had hoped, I remain convinced that there will be longer term benefits in terms of increased readership and use of the book, and I remain committed to the ethos of open access.

Professor Grace Lees-Maffei
TVAD Research Group Leader.

Exploring radical architectural group NATØ

Earlier this year, Routledge published my monograph on the last radical architectural group of the 20^th century – NATØ, Narrative Architecture Today. My book, titled NATØ: Narrative Architecture in Postmodern London, sets out a detailed, contextual history of the group, told through photographs, drawings, and ephemera. NATØ never built together, so this is an architectural history without buildings – and I argue that architectural production is constituted as much by the drawings, texts, models and exhibitions by architects as it is by built works.

NATØ portrait by Sheila Rock, 1985. L to R: Peter Fleissig, Melanie Sainsbury, Catrina Beevor, Mark Prizeman, 
Christina Norton, Carlos Villanueva Brandt, Martin Benson, Nigel Coates, Robert Mull

NATØ emerged from the Architectural Association, where they studied under Nigel Coates. Coates and his students developed an approach to architecture that drew on fashion, television, music, video and nightclubs – very much in opposition to the more serious and inward-looking work happening elsewhere in the school. Indeed, they formed following the dramatic failure of the cohort by AA external examiners James Stirling and Ed Jones in 1983, who deemed their work little more than a ‘bunch of cartoons’. Initially conceived around the production of a magazine, NATØ went on to produce several exhibitions together, alongside three issues of NATØ, disbanding in 1987 following a major installation at the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art. Their approach was emphatically against the professional mainstream of architecture, both in discourse and in terms of practice. They sought an audience in the fields of fashion and design more broadly, aligning themselves with magazines such as The Face and iD. Indeed, NATØ aimed to ‘destroy the notion of the profession’ and ‘travel over the frontier and join the rest outside architecture’ – envisioning a city made by its inhabitants, without the top-down imposition of design by professionals. In their ‘apprentice’ character NATØ described an individual who somewhat ambiguously both discredits and becomes the professional: ‘From now on none of us, and yet all of us, will be professionals’. They imagined a street-savvy, creative individual who can make or alter their surroundings in the same way they would modify or customise their clothing, self-publish or record their fanzine or punk demo, and weld furniture from found materials.

Invitation to the first NATØ meeting, from Nigel Coates to Mark Prizeman (1983)

NATØ issues 1-3, magazine covers (1983-85)

Tracing the formation of the group at the AA, my book examines the evolution of Coates's unit, including his formative years alongside Bernard Tschumi between 1974-80, before investigating NATØ's short period of activity between 1983-87 across the media of drawing, publishing and exhibiting. I had access to a fascinating body of archival material from the period, held primarily in the private collections of the NATØ members, which is published for the first time in my book. The book is structured around these three core outputs – examining first the drawings, then the magazines and finally the installations. Through the analysis of these archival materials, the book explores NATØ’s preoccupation with narrative, drawing terms and definitions from narratology into architectural discourse for the first time to develop a new vocabulary of architectural narrativity.

NATØ, Gamma City exhibition at the Air Gallery (1985)

Objects from NATØ's Gamma City, left: 'Soft Chandeliers' by Catrina Beevor; right: 'Totem' by Carlos Villanueva Brandt (1985)

Catrina Beevor, ‘Terminal Culture (an english landscape)’ from Heathrow exhibition, ICA Boston (1987)    

Carlos Villanueva Brandt, 'Heathrow' from Heathrow exhibition, ICA Boston (1987)        

Part of the importance in telling the story of NATØ is the restoration of a more complete account of postmodernism, with the book reinstating one of the many contours of the inherently multifaceted field. The book contributes to the growing body of literature that is recuperating postmodernism from the often-reductive discourses that pervade writing on architecture. My contemporary re-reading of postmodernism through NATØ's work avoids the simplifying definitions of architectural postmodernism that have focused on the stylised, two-dimensional modes of pastiche historicism. Instead, NATØ’s provides a case study of architectural postmodernism that prioritised the pleasure and creative potential of the complex and chaotic, avoiding reduction to surface decoration in favour of rich, narrativised experience.

Finally, the book also describes a specific urban milieu: 1980s London. Contextualising NATØ’s work from a spatial, social, political and cultural perspective, I align the group with the street subcultures of the period, discovering parallels between their approach and the work of contemporaneous filmmakers, graphic designers, product designers and fashion designers working in London. Indeed, the specific state of post-industrialising London and its urban decay forms an integral part of understanding the work of both NATØ and their contemporaries – an idea I expand upon in the book.

I will be building on some of the ideas developed in the book in my paper ‘DIY and disorder: NATØ’s approach to making and materiality’ for the Design History Society Conference at the University of Oslo in September 2017. In March 2018, my TVAD Talk will explore the work of product designers including Ron Arad, Tom Dixon’s Creative Salvage group and Daniel Weil whose work echoes many of NATØ’s preoccupations.


Dr. Claire Jamieson is lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies for BA Architecture and BA Interior Architecture and Design at University of Hertfordshire.

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