Design Roots: Culturally Significant Designs, Products and Practices

by Stuart Walker (Editor), Martyn Evans (Editor), Tom Cassidy (Editor), Amy Twigger Holroyd (Editor), Jeyon Jung (Editor)

Overview

Design Roots provides a comprehensive review of culturally significant designs, products and practices which are rooted to particular communities through making tradition and a sense of place. Many rich traditional practices associated with community, tacit knowledge and culture are being rapidly lost due to globalisation and urbanisation. Yet they have much to offer for the future in terms of sustainability, identity, wellbeing and new opportunities in design.

This book considers the creative roots, the place-based ecologies, and deep understandings of cultural significance, not only in terms of history and tradition but also in terms of locale, social interactions, innovation, and change for the sustainment of culturally significant material productions. Importantly, these are not locked in time by sentimentality and nostalgia but are evolving, innovative, and adaptive to new technologies and changing circumstances.

Contributing authors explore the historical roots of culturally significant designs, products and practices, emerging directions, amateur endeavours, enterprise models, business opportunities and the changing role and contribution of design in the creation of material cultures of significance, meaning and value.

An international perspective is provided through case studies and research from North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australasia, with examples including Aran jumper production in Northern Ireland, weaving in Thailand, Iranian housing design, Brazilian street design and digital crafting in the United Kingdom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474241793
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/08/2018
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd is Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Nottingham School of Art & Design, part of Nottingham Trent University. She has explored the emerging field of fashion and sustainability since 2004, initially via her craft fashion knitwear label, Keep & Share. Amy's work has been featured in various exhibitions, books and publications, from Vogue to Fashion Theory. Her research today focuses on fashion transitions: the participatory exploration of alternative, open and plural fashion systems that respect the Earth's capacity to support life.

Amy's Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded Fellowship project, Fashion Fictions, brings people together to generate, experience and reflect on engaging fictional visions of alternative fashion cultures and systems. Other initiatives include Reknit Revolution, a project supporting knitters to rework the items in their wardrobes, and research networks Stitching Together and Crafting the Commons. Amy has authored and edited several books, including her monograph Folk Fashion: Understanding Homemade Clothes (I.B. Tauris, 2017).

Table of Contents

Editorial Introduction, Stuart Walker (Lancaster University, UK)

Part I
Introduction: Culturally Significant Designs, Products and Practices, Martyn Evans (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
1. Creative Ecologies: Contextualising Culturally Significant Designs, Products and Practices, Jeyon Jung and Stuart Walker (Lancaster University, UK)
2. Forging New Futures: Cultural Significance, Revitalisation and Authenticity, Amy Twigger Holroyd (Nottingham Trent University, UK)
3. Culturally Significant Artefacts and Their Relationship to Tradition and Sustainability, Stuart Walker (Lancaster University, UK)
4. Making and its Cultural Ecological Foundations, Patrick Dillon (University of Exeter, UK)

Part II
Introduction: Authenticity and Tradition in Material Culture, Amy Twigger Holroyd (Nottingham Trent University, UK)
5. The Aran Jumper, Siún Carden (University of the Highlands and Islands, UK)
6. Chok Weaving and Textile Enterprises from Northern Thailand, Disaya Chudasri (Lancaster University, UK)
7. Oltu-Stone Prayer Beads: A Journey into the Art of Carving Tasbih, Hazal Gümüs Çiftçi (Lancaster University, UK)
8. The Mian Sara: Traditional Iranian Homes and Sustainability, Poone Yazdanpanah and Stuart Walker (Lancaster University, UK)
9. IKEA: Mass-produced National Design Identity, Sara S. Kristoffersson (Konstfack University College, Sweden)

Part III
Introduction: Revitalisation by Design, Tom Cassidy (University of Leeds, UK)
10. Culture as a Resource for a Sustainable Future in Indigenous Communities: Strengthening Atikamekw Identity and Economics through Design, Anne Marchand, Karine Awashish, Christian Coocoo, Solen Roth, Renata Marques Leitão, Cédric Sportes and Caoimhe Isha Beaulé (University of Montreal, Canada)
11. Transforming Tradition in Indonesia: A Method for Maintaining Tradition in a Craft and Design Context, Adhi Nugraha (Aalto University, Finland)
12. New Translations of South Korean Patterns, Meong Jin Shin (University of Leeds, UK)
13. Revitalisation by Design, Sebastian Cox (Sebastian Cox Ltd, UK)
14. New Caribbean Design: Revitalising Place-based Products, Patty Johnson (Patty Johnson Design, Canada)

Part IV
Introduction: Enterprise, Policy and Education for Positive Development, Jeyon Jung (Lancaster University, UK)
15. Sustaining Culturally Significant Designs, Products and Practices: Lessons from the Hohokam, Jacques Giard (Arizona State University, USA)
16. Accidents, Intentions, Movements and Makers: Artisan Economy in Portland, Oregon, USA,Steven Marotta, Austin Cummins and Charles Heying (Portland State University, USA)
17. The Role of Higher Education in Sustaining Culturally Significant Crafts in Estonia, Sirpa Kokko (University of Helsinki, Finland)
18. The Challenge of Intellectual Property Rights for Culturally Significant Patterns, Products and Processes, Tom Cassidy and Tracy Diane Cassidy (University of Leeds, UK)
19. The Case of the City Different: The Intersection of the Museum, the Artist and the Marketplace, Marsha C. Bol (Carnegie Museum of Natural History, USA)

Part V
Introduction: Design Futures, Stuart Walker (Lancaster University, UK) and Martyn Evans (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
20. Research Approaches for Culturally Significant Design, Tom Cassidy (University of Leeds, UK)
21. Digital Transformations, Amateur Making and the Revitalisation of Traditional Textile Crafts, Amy Twigger Holroyd (Nottingham Trent University, UK)
22. Design for Social Innovators, Anna Meroni and Daniela Selloni (Politechnico di Milano, Italy)
23. Integrated Scales of Design and Production for Sustainability with a Focus on Graduate Design Work in Lighting, Çagla Dogan (Middle Eastern Technical University, Turkey)
24. Designing Authentic Brands: How Designerly Approaches can Craft Authentic Brand Identity, Emma Murphy (Glasgow School of Art, UK)
25. Strategies for Revitalisation of Culturally Significant Designs, Products and Practices, Martyn Evans (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Amy Twigger Holroyd (Nottingham Trent University, UK), Stuart Walker and Jeyon Jung (Lancaster University, UK) and Tom Cassidy (University of Leeds, UK)

Index

Editorial Reviews

I savoured each bite-size essay and its ideas until the elephant was consumed. I then sat back and enjoyed the satisfaction of an admirable accomplishment. I would recommend this edited volume to thinking practitioners and researchers looking for inspiration – it is full of ideas worth pursuing. It takes head on a large challenge and offers illumination along a path forward.” —Design Journal

“Craft has deep roots and heritage but these material skills and ways of working are just as relevant today as they were centuries ago. Critical writing on craft, such as Design Roots, is crucial to ensure it continues to evolve and thrive.” —Rosy Greenlees OBE, Executive Director of the Crafts Council, UK

“5 / 5 stars

Engaging, insightful read for anyone with an interest in traditional craft or sustainable design.

This book offers broad appeal to creatives and academics alike, focusing on the cultural significance of traditional craft and the potential for sustainability in a globalising world.

Preliminary chapters introduce the key concepts and theoretical foundations of the book in a highly readable style. The cultural significance of designs, products and practices is deconstructed and situated within the context of a globalising world. Despite the apparent homogenisation of culture resulting from economic drivers such as trade, technology and urbanisation, the book charts a resurgence of the traditional, the situated, the local. Crucially, tradition is recognised as perpetually transforming and further, as potentially transformative, offering implications for sustainability in the recreation of a meaningful material culture.

Drawing on research from across the world, a series of engaging case studies provide context to the discussion presented in the opening chapters. For example, the revelation of surprising myths surrounding the culturally significant |Aran jumper provide useful insight into the construction of authenticity and tradition and the study of Oltu-stone prayer bead production not only examines reasons for the loss of traditional handicrafts but also the potential for sustainability.

Further case studies focus on examples of the revitalisation of culturally significant designs, products and practices. The potential of culture as a resource and design as a tool for sustainable development is examined. Importantly, the role and responsibility of the designer in transforming tradition is deliberated.

The following series of case studies included in the book consider the broader context, examining structural factors that support revitalisation through design, detailing contemporary approaches to development.

The final section is dedicated to the future, with emphasis on the role of design and the use of contemporary strategies, in the successful revitalisation of culturally significant designs, products and practices.

Overall, this book roots well-considered theory in a wealth of relevant, contextual research, offering an engaging, insightful read to anyone with an interest in traditional craft or sustainable design.” —Florence J. Logan, www.amazon.co.uk

From the Publisher