Aotearoa, New Zealand, is both a bicultural nation and a multicultural society, so the need to prioritise culture in design pedagogy and practice is not only palpable but well overdue within our creative tertiary institutes. Diversities are acknowledged as highly valuable within higher education, but when they are explored as non-western cultural and creative practices, they are still sidelined as optional, or as extensions to the current teleological pathways carved out within tertiary design curricula and practice. Building on the 'Indigenous Wisdom' framework outlined in the emergent design provocation Transition Design, this research introduces how an appreciation of cultural acumen can benefit, enrich, critique, and radicalise current design thinking, process and praxis. This study will discuss both Māori and Pasifika world views and ideologies and illustrate how these can enrich and enable design education. The aim of this paper is to highlight an appreciation for the reciprocity and respect imbued within kaupapa Māori and the Pasifika ideology of ta-vā (time and space) and how these considerations can enhance the discipline when they are purposefully, knowingly and respectfully imbued in design thinking and praxis. This research specifically focuses on the establishment of connections as essential to both the discipline and the teaching and learning experience. To achieve this, this study will introduce commensality, the coming together around a table to break bread and boundaries, and place it within the framework of Transition Design. Having gained an appreciation of Transition Design, Māori and Pasifika world views and ideologies, and commensality, this research will exemplify instances where students have combined these considerations to enhance their design solutions, and also where pedagogy can be used to specifically enhance teaching and learning by enabling an appreciation of cultural identity and social connectivity within the learning space.
It seems remiss that while New Zealand’s design prowess continues to impress globally, the indigenous and cultural knowledge that has for centuries inspired and informed aesthetic languages worldwide has not been recognised for its contribution. Forgotten, or perhaps conveniently ignored, is the praise of both the New Zealand Māori and Pacific people’s use of nature’s harmonies to achieve beauty in aesthetics made in 1852 by education and aesthetic reformist, Owen Jones (1809 -1874) in his seminal and determinative work, The Grammar of Ornament. In order to reinstate Jones’ claim, this paper asserts it is critical that we revisit design’s history from a less Eurocentric perspective. This offers an opportunity to debunk the counter-claim that indigeneity was counter-productive to the development of modernity. By recalibrating design’s history with a more accurate and culturally orientated compass, the contributions made by indigenous knowledge to the endeavours of some of design history’s most iconic contributors becomes tangible. Having made these connections, this study will introduce Māori and Pasifika ideologies of time, space and connectivity to demonstrate a pathway forward in which this knowledge can be understood, acknowledged, respected and most importantly appropriately included within design’s histories, current practices and future endeavours.
<p>This study investigates the roots of interdisciplinary architectural and design education and methodology in Europe and the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular this thesis is concerned with the establishment of the principles of a universal visual language within this context. Walter Gropius' (1883‐1969) efforts to propagate a universal understanding of architecture, art and design at the Bauhaus is a central focus of this study along with the use of a universal visual language to facilitate such an ideal. This thesis argues that the instigation of the Bauhaus preliminary course, the Vorkurs, developed by Johannes Itten (1888–1967) and matured by Bauhaüslers Lázsló Moholy‐Nagy (1895‐1946) and Josef Albers (1888‐1976) offered vitality, integrity, creativity and longevity to Bauhaus pedagogy and posits that the beliefs and practices of the Vorkurs contributed significantly to the translation of European modern design education in the United States. Although Bauhaus pedagogical translations were refuted by some and misunderstood by others in the wholly different economic context of the United States, this study proposes that the translations of the Vorkurs methodology, by the émigré Bauhaüslers, Moholy‐Nagy at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, Albers at Black Mountain College and Yale and Gropius at Harvard contributed to the codification of modern twentieth‐century design education, and as such continues to offer relevance in current architectural and design pedagogical environments.</p>
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