reflective journal design

8/6/2019 Reflective Journal Design

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Reective Journal

by Bernadete Demeter


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Contents

The Story of Davis 1

The Key of Wisdom 2

Door nr. 1 The door of Childhood 3

Origin of the Monster 4

The story of Cerberus 5

Door nr. 2. Youth 6

Creativity 7

Door nr. 3. Seniority 8

Conclusion 9


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Page 1

The Story of Davis

I live at the student halls, a colourful space it is, i must say, full with life and movement. It

s powerful vibes come from the vast amount of students from all over the planet who came to this

metropolit and modern city, London. Everyone is different here, everyone has a different mother

language, a different walk and posture, different beliefes and everyone has been raised in a differentculture with dissimilar rules.

This I had to realise at a chat that i had with one of my chineese faltmates on a strange kind of

evening which has been elevated with the scent of crazy herbs, for as you can see, some revelations

come out of magic and in order to call them into reality one needs special allures.

On this night, the so called atmate of mine, the chineese Davis, who happends to have a name

that can be everything but not chineese, but this is a different story, has been confronted by a question

of mine : What is in your opinion the meaning of life, Davis?, a very profound and genius question

that was to me.

So, Davis told me very relaxed : I don t have one !, and the show was over, no opinion, a

blocking answer. And all of a sudden, there seemed to be too much light in the room, my head stopped

to feel dizzy, the night seemed to take a turn and transformed itself. Realising the danger that was

looking from around the corner, i knew that i had to do something to save the night and all i could do

was to come with another question.

But why, why Davis don t you have an opinion about life ?

And his answer made me discover a secret recipe of the cineese culture.

One can form an opinion about life only then, when he has travelled trough all the stages of life andlived them corespondingly to what they are and in the end, one can form an opinion about life at a

senior stage.

Childhood is described by naivity.

Youth is described by by learning.

Seniority is described by wisdom.

Enlightment


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The Key of Wisdom

This key of wisdom i take and help myself with it to enter the doors of each chapter of

the project.

DOOR NR. 1 CHILDHOOD(PRECEDENT AND MODEL)

DOOR NR. 2 YOUTH (SCALE AND HABITATION)

DOOR NR. 3 SENIORITY (TYPOLOGY AND CONTEXT)

These chapters represent at the same time the methodology which i am given and which i

call a skeleton. The whole process that follows the methodology is similar to dressing a skeleton

up in esh and skin.

If you look at the big picture, at the whole group that is studying the Graduate Diploma,you will realise that each of them is going to dress up the methodology according to it s ideeas,

culture and research. These three elements and possibly many more, create the uniqueness of

each body that will be built on the given skeleton. The body that each of us will end up with will

stay for the architecture piece or interior design instalation which we propose.

As a last element which will majorly contribute to the development will be the under-

standing of the whole scheme. If one realises that on the bones rst needs the esh to be attached

and only after that the skin, than the outcome is going to have a natural appearance.

If one will think, before even putting the esh on the bones, rst about the skin, andabout it s colour and elasticity, the outcoming ideea or proposal might be in the danger to lack

something. The skin might be black, but the esh might has been structured as the one of a white

human. The outcome will never look as a black person, only as something unnatural, something

forced to be like that.

One has to understand what kind of thinking has to be applied in each part of the methodol-

ogy and this is the reason why i give to the three parts new names, because i intend to underline

the thinking process with them.


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Door nr. 1 The door of Childhood

I call PRECEDENT AND MODEL the door of childhood.

I conclude that this is the chapter of childhood, because of the way i approach it, with naivity, cre-

ativity and curiosity.

A child is curious, creative and naive. A child is a big observer of the surrounding world. He doesn

t have time to form opinions because the environment that surrounds him is pushing his mind and logic to

form too many questions that have to be answered and it is pushing his eyes to observe too many things that

need to be seen.

The rst stage of the project is similar to my description and it nds me as a naive child, which ac-

cording to the methodology, has to select an existing component of architecture, observe it and question it,

just as a child does with the new world that opens up to him.

The freedom that i have, of selecting the component of architecture after my own interest, gives me

a driving force, gives me passion. This helps me to create my physical model. It drives me to analise the

model i am creating and it pushes my mind to question it. I understand though that passion is here only a

bonus. It is strongly related to the interest in the selected component of architecture. As big the concern in

a certain suject is, as big becomes the urge to know more about it, to have a better understanding of it. As

deeper the understanding goes as stronger becomes the passion.

This passionate process of discovery, of building the physical model up while approaching his dis-

guise with questions and analisis is leaving me with a lot of information about it.I take all the information

as it is, with a naive trust, without questioning myself if it is good or bad and push my model further untill

i create a monster, The Monster.

This is the nal point of the rst part of the project. I am left here with The Monster, which i can not

dene yet because i do not have a technique to dene it, i do not have the skills to dene it.


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Origin of the Monster

I have been born and raised in Romania. My education has been given at a German school. I am

uently speaking German, English, Romanian and Hungarian. Now, you may ask yourself why a Ger-

man school in Romania and where is the Hungarian language coming from ?

With this ocasion, allow me to open a little funny chapter about the story of Romania and Hungaria,

countries, which if you can imagine, have to share, unfortunately, a common border. Nothing worse than

this. They are neighboring coutries and what could be worse than having to ght with your neighbour,

he, who knows everything about you and you, who know everything about him. There is not a chance

that he will not at some point, drive all the existing hell out of you.

Well, this is what they had and are still having and will have for the rest of their existance and

this is the medium i am linving in and where i am coming from.

This, I told you, so that you have an ideea about the place i am coming from and the things i have

spent my time on as a child. I had to stalk the neighbor. This is not to blame, because everybody was

doing this.

But the worst part of the whole story is not this one. The worst part of the story is the fact that

my mother is Romanian and my father Hungarian. The disastrous combination. A marriage hundret

percently packed with a lot of ghts and endless contradictory discussions, a lot of white premature hair

and trembling hands, where at all the family gatherings bought families would dress their faces with fake

little salon smiles engaging in ponderous debates about their cultures.

This is what everyone would think, after what i have told you, but you see, my parents were morethan just a Romanian woman and a Hungarian man. They were lovers. They married in true love and this

ultimate experience and feeling of life elevated their thinking and helped them to nd the proper recipe

for a happy life.

They made two children. Me, the girl and the elder one and him, the boy and the smaller one. In

their wisdom, they have sent us bought to be educated at German schools. Why am i calling this wisdom

? The German school was the compromise between a Romanian education and a Hungarian education.

Genius, isn t it ?

But, if you think that with this decision i have been excused from ghts between cultures, youwill be mistaken.

The class i have been in has been populated by students with notorious parents, who did every-

thing, that their little bastards get as teachers the best ones out of the school. But nothing without a cost.

And who had to pay for the cost. We, the pupils.

Knowledge comes with passion. We had the best teachers, passionate about their work, about

teaching, about teaching children, loving them. The teachers that loved us the most were the German


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The story of Cerberus

It happend that i was to know the story on a regular morning in winter, when my crazy and always

unpredictable Romanian teacher entered the classroom, having her short and from the years that passed

by, whitened hair , painted with green. A total shock, as you can imagine. This happened in the rst year

she taught us, during the rst days of our encounters.

She entered hastily the classroom, found her way rapidly to the desk, made herself comfortable

by sitting on it and told us the following thing :

You have got to tell your parents to by you the books of the Olympus legends. This is compul-

sory ! and after that she was silent for a pretty long time, staring at us with seriousness, through this

establishing a grave atmosphere in the classroom. This meant that those Olympic legends had to be of

some big importance. True it was, but not necessary of big importance as for its magic tales.

As you can see, this was the precedent moment where i have found out about Cerberus.

The ancient Greeks have reserved a chapter in their vivid mythology, which serves to the descrip-

tion of the monstruous three headed hound, which was supposed to guide for eternity the gates of the

fear shaking Underworld, the kingdom of the God Hades.

Cerberus was the offspring of Echidna, a hybrid half-woman and half-serpent, and Typhon, a re-breathing gi-

ant whom even the Olympian gods feared. Its brother is Orthrus, always depicted as a two-headed hellhound.

Cerberus is depicted as having three heads, a mane of live serpents and a snakes tail. In most works the three-

heads each respectively see and represent the past, the present, and the future, while other sources suggest the

heads represent birth, youth, and old age. Each of Cerberus heads is said to have an appetite only for live meat

and thus allow the spirits of the dead to freely enter the underworld, but allow none to leave.

Despite his oros disguise and dreadful genetic compound, he still has been beaten two times by

two illustrious names in the golden mythology of the ancient Greek.

First, he has been defeated by the powerful and strong Hercule and the second time by Orfeus,

the legendary musician, poet and prophet of the greek mythology.

language teacher and the Romanian language teacher. Yes, Romanian language has been taught to us as

well, according to the law, it was compulsory, for we lived in Romania and not on the moon.

So, the German language teacher did all the best she could in gaining our love, going so far that

she also cried several times with the aim of getting our attention but unfortunately for her and my parents,

the Romanian teacher seduced us irrecoverably, because she knew how to do it, by story telling.And one of the storys that i still remeber from her is about Cerberus.


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Door nr. 2. Youth

I am calling SCALE and HABITATION Youth.

Youth is the moment when we learn how to store the gathered information about the outside world.

We learn how to tame and train our mind to read existing images and we are taught technics which help us

to use the information as a driving force for new discoveries.

I look in this part of the project at the game that has been introduced to me as to the skills or technique

that i have to use to read my monster, to develop it, to push it further in the direction of the sketch design

proposal.

The GAME

HYPERBOLE

METAPHOR

ALLEGORY

RETHORIC NARRATIVE

SEQUENCE

MEMORY

I transform this game into a song and i do the same as Orfeus did with Cerber. I sing this song to my

Monster, to tame it, to remodel his soul and take him from the Underground world of darkness into the light

where i can see his shapes, where i can admire him and where i can place him and give him a functionality,

a reason for being, a positive and practical motif for existing.

All i miss is the instrument on which to sing the song. For this i choose creativity as a tool which

should help me to propagate the notes into the monsters true soul.

Each of them had a different approach in defeating him, acording to the skills one possessed. Hercule

has been known as beeing the bravest and strongest personage in the greek mythology and Orfeus has been

famous because of the beautiful sounds he could give birth to, when he was singing.

As you can conclude from this, Hercule overcame his dreadful powers by ghting him with his barehands and Orfeus defeated him by taming him, by introducing into his soul sensitive notes and transforming

the once rageous monster into a being which could bear empathy and could long for gentleness.

The next chapterthat i am opening will talk about the transformation that my monster will have to

go through. I am going to talk about the way i will tranform it and the thinking i use during this process.


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Creativity

What is creativity ?

I am answering this question in the aim of tableting the meaning of creativity and representing it

through a couple of quotes which will leave place for you to think as well about it.

Creative Genius dont add, they take away

Ex. How do you carve the sculpture of an elephant ?

Get a big block of marble. Then carve away everything that doesent look like an elephant

Creative professionals know that only an amateur would ever say : What can we add to make this more

creative ?

Ex. My classmates contact lenses ; I invite you to think about the process that had occured between the

eye glases and the contact lenses. How much material disappeared, has been taken away ? What a simple

and brilliant nal proposal has been produced.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep

Scott Adams

My instrument is creativity but i can not sing my song correctly at it only if i possess the soul of

a child, for creativity is characteristic to children, when it comes to it s denition. The development of theMonster occurs with the cleverness of Youth and creativity of the Childhood.

Pablo Picasso must have understood this in the most clear way by saying that : Every child is

an arstist


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Door nr. 3. Seniority

In the middle of the creative explosions, in the middle of the hallucinating atmoshpere that sur-

rounded me, of that dynamic electried cloud that was moving tawards a place i haven t expected to

come so soon, the golden door arised and with it a scary moment of calm.

Everything seemed holy and if i am to realise the sounds i was hearing, i can tell you, that they

were the beautiful notes of harps and the distant choirs of heavenly enlightment.

I have played on my instrument, named creativity, the song called Game and this has taken me

on a fulminant journey which has guided me through all the shapes and colours, which the soul of the

Monster could take, never knowing or having a clue which one of them might be the right one for him,

for each of them would depict themselves with a strong contour.

But i would like to invite you to imagine a space, a space where no boundaries exist, ooded

with light, exempt from gravity, a place of transformation, of metamorphosis. This space opened to me

as a brithdaypresent, displaying in a magical way all the new souls of the Monster.

Do you have a picture in your mind, with a senior person, sitting at a table and wondering at the

existing environment without exteriorising any exultation, just radiating an ununderstandable peace ?

That is me. This is how i stay right now, in a comfortable throne, on top of a silent mountain, looking at

the innite posibilities i created. And i must say, it is breathtaking.

It is strange. The nal step, the wisdom, the seniority, the opinion about life, should have foundme with a single, clearly expressed design proposal, instead, a universe of innite possibilities unlocked

itself infront of my eyes.

I have mentioned that the taming process of the Monster would nd him a place in the world, a

functionality, a meaning, a name. This is what it did, but everything multiplied by 10, 100, 1000.

The monster is tamed and transformed. If at the beginning it has been nothing but an instrument

to stare at, a piece of pure art, know it becomes of practical use and in this case, of innite practical

usage. It s soul is multiplied, it overlaps innite domains at the same time, starting from the very tiny

product to the gods job, urban planning.

This nal outcome, which has come with innite posibilities, i translate as the celebration of

the practicality of the Monster. All the work and thinking that i so passionately consumed here were to

demonstrate that the unusual and frightening, hide an innite potential of practicality and uniqueness,

for in this world of repetition, the cure that we now need is no more and no less but invention. One has

only to know how to sing and he will nd the key to give a new colour to the world.


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Conclusion

The beauty of this methodology with a single quote :

Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist

This quote describes the methodology in a tableted version, and it compresses the main ideea

of what it is about.

With the discovery i have made, which is my innite possibility to name things, to see them in

different perspectives, i understand, that design is not only about design, it is about something more.

This discovery takes me to the researches that have been made regarding our Universe and

the fact that there is not only one Universe, there are multiple Universes, innite. I link design, art,architecture, technology and science and an astonishing understanding opens up in my mind :

If only artist are dreamers and if Surealism belongs only to the ne arts, then i would like to

come with an adition and say that what now happens in technology and science, which are strongly

related to architecture, has to be dened as pure Surealism, a hyper reality. We are overcoming our

dreams...but This belongs now to a different story.


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