Through the other side of the looking-glass : in search of meaning in the language of design

Predan, Barbara (author)

In this text, our goal is to find meaning in the language of design. If what Proust, in his book In Search of Lost Time, sought to express is that it is only the creation of art that can save us from our impermanence and give our lives some form of meaning, the question being asked in the present context has to do with searching for meaning in the language of design. In order to tease out this meaning, we asked ourselves the following questions: What do we mean when we talk about the lan-guage of design? How is the context of nature apparent in the language of design? We go on to show that the main reason these two questions are so critical is that they represent a throwback to the 19th century—a time when the foundations of design as a professional discipline were being laid down. Meanwhile, the answers to these questions trace the crucial transformations of the thought in the design of the 20th century, while also appearing, as an echo, in the language of design in the 21st century. In other words: growing out of the Wittgensteinian context of language as a form of life, we endeavour in this study to understand how the nas-cent discipline of design wove itself into the language of the commu-nity, eventually forming new words, or giving new meanings to exist-ing ones. The study brought us back to the writings of John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic and thinker, on architecture and design. In the time of burgeoning industrialisation, Ruskin found himself standing at the crossroads between the old and the new. He could sense that a new dis-cipline was emerging, but in making sense of it, instead of drawing on the language of progress and the pragmatic convenience of industrial-isation, he chose to counter the so-called technological breakthroughs of that time by seeking inspiration in nature. The chosen example demonstrates the considerable influence Ruskin's thought has had on assigning meaning to and further develop-ment of the language of the theory of design, as well as the design dis-cipline in the broader context of its practice

• Language: English
• Keywords: language of design, correlation, organic design, design theory
• Typology: 1.16 - Independent Scientific Component Part or a Chapter in a Monograph
• Organization: ALUO - Academy of Fine Arts and Design
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 77-90
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-148441
• UDC: 7.01
• COBISS.SI-ID: 147509507
• Publication date in RUL: 23.08.2023

Record is a part of a monograph

• Title: Art between practice and theory : theoretical reflections on artistic reality on the threshold of the third millennium
• Editors: Jožef Muhovič
• Place of publishing: Ljubljana
• Publisher: University of Ljubljana Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN: 978-961-297-084-0
• COBISS.SI-ID: 143807491

Licences

• License: CC BY-SA 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Description: This Creative Commons license is very similar to the regular Attribution license, but requires the release of all derivative works under this same license.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: teorija oblikovanja, jezik oblikovanja