Terra Incognita was a Latin term used on maps from the Age of Discovery to denote unexplored territories. It's a perspectival term. Because, of course, there were people like the Tupinambá actually living in those seemingly unexplored lands on Martin Waldseemüller's map. The places the Tupinambá knew intimately -- where they fished or hunted or celebrated or slept -- were not Terra Incognita to them. But to the Europeans embarking on their voyages each new cove and settlement was a curve or mark to be made on a map. It was a matter of perspective. A matter of technology. Some small matter of hubris.
It remains a question of all of these things in the Information Age. The optimism and hubris of Big Data appear to be unrivaled - What don't we know in the age of Big Data? By tapping mystic rhythms with our fingers and staring into squares of light we traverse great oceans of distance. As we...
Location: Yverdons-les-Bains, Switzerland
Scale: 80,000 sf (7400 sm)
Status: Completed 2002
Awards
Progressive Architecture - P/A Design Award - 2003
Swiss TV and B. magazine - Golden Rabbit for Best Building of 2002 - 2003
The Guardian - Top Ten Buildings of the Decade - 2009
Summary
Blur is an architecture of atmosphere—a fog mass resulting from natural and man-made forces. Water is pumped from Lake Neuchâtel, filtered, and shot as a fine mist through 35 000 high-pressure nozzles. A smart weather system reads the shifting climatic conditions of temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction and regulates water pressure at a variety of zones.
Upon entering Blur, visual and acoustic references are erased. There is only an optical “white-out” and the “white-noise” of pulsing nozzles. It is a habitable medium that is formless, featureless, depth-less, scaleless, massless, surface-less, and dimensionless.
Contrary to immersive environments that strive for visual fidelity in high-definition with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition. In this exposition pavilion there is nothing to see but our...
Lev Manovich is a new media theorist and digital culture advocate. He is a professor at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a Director of the Software Studies Initiative which works on the analysis and visualization of big cultural data. His work is about creating permanent documents out of seemingly impermanent or unconnected pieces.
Manovich will provide insight on the question of the permanence of software and technology, specifically imagery and data....
Our team of advisers represent various realms of design and respond to our work with insight from their combined years of experience.
Tania Allen
Assistant Professor of Art + Design
Denise Gonzales Crisp
Professor of Graphic Design
Russell Flinchum
Associate Professor of Art and Design/Industrial Design
Jennifer Landin
Teaching Assistant Professor of Biology
Fernando Magallanes
Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture
Cecilia Mouat
Ph.D. in Design. Designer, visual artist and registered architect in Chile
Sarah Powers
Artist. Executive Director at Visual Art Exchange
Sarah Queen
Assistant Professor of Architecture
Marc Russo
Assistant Professor of Art and Design at NC State University
Gab Smith
CAM Executive Director
...
Section I: Semester-long Advertising Strategy
When Rachel Swiezynski and I came together to form the marketing team for The Student Publication, we outlined specific goals we hoped to achieve throughout the semester. Prior to this year, there had been no coordinated effort to market The Student Publication. Rachel and I are both students in the College of Design pursing degrees in Graphic Design and Architecture respectively, and as such had very narrow formal understandings of what it meant to market a product. Throughout our time in school it has become evident in both of our chosen fields that the ability to promote and sell ones creative idea plays a key role in the acceptance or rejection of a design; we knew the lessons from a semester spent developing and enacting a marketing strategy for The Student Publication would contribute to our abilities as effective designers.
During the first week of the semester, Rachel and I laid out an ambitious marketing strategy for...
Students have been working to create design directions. Looking at the experience of reading, writing, designing and moving through a print publication the design of Volume 36 will be a publication like non of the previous volumes. You can see initial designs here....
Design LIFE, the Publication of the College of Design at North Carolina State, is running an article on Volume 36 of the Student Publication. The article itself explains and outlines the process that the students went through in developing the theme, as well as the amazing Exhibition Party that they held at Studio 704 in Boylan Heights (home of City Fabric.)
The Student Publication:
Form + Fiction: The role of design and designers in shaping, framing and reflecting reality.
Volume 36 of The Student Publication just released the 2012/2013 prospectus, complete with an exhibition launch party. Contributors to Volume 36 include a wide and diverse variety of perspectives on the theme of Form + Fiction. From practicing architects, to current College of Design students, the editors—Anna Bailer and Michael Southard—wanted to create a volume that focused not on a single vision of the future and the role design plays in its development, but on the myriad dialogues and discussions that must emerge from...
Volume 36 of The Student Publication offers a wide perspective on the nature of reality and how designers affect, create and modify it. From science fiction writers to speculative designers, the contributors to this volume are diverse, passionate and provocative.
If you are interested in contributing, please contact our editors at design_studentpublication@ncsu.edu. You can also contact them directly: Anna Bailer at aebailer@ncsu.edu or Michael Southard at masoutha@ncsu.edu.
Volume 36 Contributors include:
Katherine Diuguid
Asst. Professor of Art+Design in Fibers & Surface Design
Ted Givens
Design Partner at 10 Design in Hong Kong
Stephen Killian
Junior in Architecture in the College of Design
Roger Manley
Director of the Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Silas Munro
Faculty Chair, MFA in Graphic Design at VCFA
Nicolas Rader
Architect at Snohetta
Marc Russo
Asst. Professor of Art+Design in Animation & New Media
Bruce Sterling
Science fiction writer
Danny Stillion
Design Director & Associate Partner at IDE
August Turak
Zen Entrepreneur, Consultant, Executive
...
August Turak has integrated his life-long passion for personal and organizational transformation with a highly successful career as an entrepreneur, consultant, and executive for a variety of companies. He draws on over 30 years of business experience to bring readers the kind of stories that transform their perspective.
Turak's essay delves into the thought provoking meaning behind a Rabbi's story of two men as a comparison of vastly different ways of thinking....
Danny Stillion is a Design Director and Associate Partner at IDEO, a global design firm.
Stillion wil be discussing human centered design and the role of empathy in design–its importance not only for his specific field, but for design in general....
Bruce Sterling is a well known science fiction author, blogger and organizer who helped define the Cyberpunk movement – a genre which focuses on "high tech and low life." In 2005, Sterling became "visionary in residence" at Art Center College Center of Design in Pasadena, California.
Sterling will be focusing on the attraction and pitfalls of design fiction in a humorous and insightful manner....
Marc Russo is an Assistant Professor of Art + Design in the College of Design at North Carolina State University with a focus on new media and animation design. In addition to teaching, Russo also works as a freelance designer and shows his work nationally and internationally in art and design galleries and exhibitions.
Russo with be using a visual essay to invite readers into his fictional worlds, questioning our fundamental beliefs and inviting us to question them ourselves....
Nicolas Rader is an Architect at Snohetta, an international firm with US headquarters in New York City. Rader is currently working in Raleigh on the Hunt Library, located on the Centennial Campus of NC State. The new library houses a "bookbot" rather than bookshelves, changing the definition of what a library is and how it's used.
Rader will be writing about the role of design and architecture in moving the future forward, specifically looking at the Hunt Library....
Silas Munro is the principal of From the Desk of, a graphic design studio based in Miami, Florida. He is currently Chair of the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. For the past five years, Munro has studied the concept of the alter ego, giving students the opportunity to designer their own alter ego based on fact and fiction.
Munro wil be exploring how designers have deployed form and fiction inwardly to design what they know into someone that they want to know better: a potential future self....
Roger Manley is the Director of the Gregg Museum of Art + Design at NCSU. The Gregg's current exhibition, Art Without Artists, raises provocation questions about the criteria that makes an object art.
Manley will be responding to this question and giving insight into the relationship between art, artists and the fictitious....
Stephen Killian is a junior in Architecture within the College of Design. As head organizer of the annual Halloween Bash, Killian created a rich story specifically designing every artifact to fit within the context of the theme – Apocalypse. His attention to the overarching narrative provoked the viewer to enter the reality he created.
Killian will be writing about his process, highlighting every detail and logistical error he encountered and overcame, and how that contributed to the overall experience....
Ted Givens is a visionary, award-winning architect and founding partner at Hong Kong-based 10 Design. His firm was conceived as an environment that would allow for an intense focus on design and research.
Givens will be writing about how rough visionary thoughts move into reality – tied to client and content....
Katherine Diuguid is an Assistant Professor of Art + Design in the College of Design at North Carolina State University. Along with Justin LeBlanc, she is the new faculty chair of Art 2 Wear. In this role, Diuguid and LeBlanc have made any changes for the Spring 2013 show, including devising an overarching there – Hypernatural.
Diuguid will be writing about this new theme and the future of Art 2 Wear as an experience in fashion and wearable art.
...
/by Anna Bailer/
Environments can be comforting, provocative, or sometimes disturbing; all of which have different effects on the viewer. Being submerged in a new or different environment is an effective way to transform the reality of another person, or can prompt them to question the one they currently know. WE The designer of these environments has the ability to change a person’s life, just for a moment or possibly creating an experience that will stay with them forever. It’s up to the designer to decide what direction they would like to shift reality. Immersive design is the art of telling stories through spaces, allowing a viewer get lost in another world, either digitally or physically. These stories have the potential to become the reality of the person interacting with them. In 2007 a British designer named Alex McDowell coined the term “immersive design”, he wanted to put a name to the discipline that focuses on narratives and story telling through...
/by Jennifer Peeler/
Within my short lifetime I’ve had the privilege, as the daughter of an Air Force officer, to move, live and travel across the United States. I grew up a person without a place that defined home – I had many places, many identities from which to choose. We moved back and forth between military bases and suburbs in seven states. In between moves, we traveled to major cities as tourists and rural countrysides for family visits to my parents’ childhood homes. My father is the son of two Southern school teachers who are the product of dairy farm owners and mill workers. My mother was the first of her Appalachian family to go to college; her mother is a housekeeper and her father was a salesman and carpenter. These rural roots have built my intuition and guided me to a deep love and understanding of rural life. Clarity comes as I grow older; that, neither the rural world...
This summer I lost my way. I lost myself. I lost what I stand for. I was enclosed by the darkness and couldn’t seem to find my way out. Coming home healed me. Understanding who I am healed me. Finding peace healed me. Slowly I found my way back to the light, back to my faith, back to myself.
this is my journey.
I believe that what I give to the world is what it will have to keep of me.
And I don’t have much, but I have my work.
As an artist and a designer, I struggle to find my place, I struggle to matter.
But I know that I’ve been given a gift, and I want to share it with others.
Through my art I want to impact lives.
I want to inspire someone, pierce their heart, or plant an idea in their head.
Essentially, I want to improve, or shape, a person’s reality. Their life.
And I want to do this through metaphor, through form,...
Melany Bates, Senior in Design Studies
“It is the very aura of the disinterested, the noncommercial, bordering on the “otherworldly” that makes culture so attractive to corporations or the promotion of a political agenda. The cloak of culture protects them against public scrutiny of labor practices, health and safety of plants/products, environmental record, as well as attempts to influence public policy on taxes, trade, regulations, etc. We must fend off the takeover of culture, our turf, and its subjection to the business rationale-with its inevitable consequences of censorship and self-censorship. We have to fight against being made stooges in corporate and political strategies.” -Hans Haacke
I tread down a steep slope while try to find a stable position on the idea of truth behind design. I am coaxed into believing only one side of local or global issues and trusting in the legitimacy of dynamic creations. Public opinion is shaped by the media, but then that public opinion affects what corporations and...
Grace Pledger, Senior in Graphic Design
Although we might be tempted to think of it as a recent invention, future-casting is a new term for a very old practice. Man has always looked to the future and dreamed of what would come next. We create fantasies, fictions of what may come. Some of these fictions become realities and others do not. Some fantasies that were supposed to be fictional do not stay in the realm of the imagination; some well thought out predictions never quite reach reality. It was this fascinating look into how people in the past thought of the future that first drew me to the practice of future-casting. I found it entertaining to see what people in the past predicted would come true. Out of this simple entertainment came a more anthropological view that lead into my interest in future-casting today.
It is difficult to say what will become a reality and what will stay a fiction in a...
Jennifer Peeler, Graduate Student in Architecture
Is the largest divide in American politics a spatial one? URBAN to RURAL. One need look no further than the red and blue election maps that identify each county with its primary vote to see evidence of the divide - isn’t the contrast of the cities easy to pick out? The divide was not obvious until it was mapped, until a designer distilled the information. By simplifying the world into patterns we have revealed a hidden complexity in the socially dynamic relationship between urban and rural people. Recognizable patterns make connections between the seemingly disparate ideas of geography and voting. What happens when ideas become connected? New patterns and ideas emerge from the chaos of overlapping complexities. Can designers make those patterns reality?
The city and the country no longer meet and overlap. What if they did? What if there was a place where the fabric of the city was interwoven with the landscape? What if the...
If you are interested in adding your voice to The Student Publication, there are several ways to contribute.
You can contact our editors at design_studentpublication@ncsu.edu or use this form to contribute online now!
[contact-form-7 id="753" title="Online Contribution"]...
Contributor invitations have been sent!
The editorial team has reached out to professionals and theorists in the design world for their opinions on how design and designers define, frame and shape reality. Many of the people on our top secret list (to be revealed soon!) are practicing designers that are clearly shaping the world around us - we can't wait to see how their ideas fit into Form + Fiction....
Form + Fiction:
The role of design and
designers in defining, framing
and shaping reality.
“Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fiction in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!” — Ursula LeGuin, Science Fiction Writer
“The idea of probable, preferable, plausible and possible futures – the space between reality and the impossible – allows designers to challenge design orthodoxy and prevailing technological visions so that fresh perspectives can begin to emerge. “
—Dunne & Raby
In Volume 36 of The Student Publication, we look to engage a discussion on the role of design and designers in shaping, framing, and...
Our team of advisers represent various realms of design and respond to our work with insight from their combined years of experience.
Tania Allen
Assistant Professor of Art + Design
Susan Brandeis
Distinguished Professor of Art + Design, Graduate Director of Art + Design
Tim Buie
Associate Professor of Industrial Design
Denise Gonzales Crisp
Professor of Graphic Design
David Hill
Assistant Professor of Architecture, Graduate Director of Architecture
Art Rice
Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and International Studies, Landscape Architecture Professor, Director of the Ph.D. Program...
