Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / This thesis maps the sixty year history of the Qantas flight attendants’ uniform. It figures the Qantas uniform as a prism through which to explore a history of modern Australian fashion and design, and the social and cultural web that gives life to the image of the Qantas flight attendant, rather than a history of the airline itself. Qantas, with its humble origins in the rural town of Longreach, Queensland, became the national carrier when it combined interests with Britain’s Imperial Airways to form Qantas Empire Airways in 1934. From the time the first female Qantas flight hostess appeared on board in 1948, the aircraft aisle became a 'catwalk for the image-makers'. It is particularly important to the role of the flight hostess, later the flight attendant, that the dress of the cabin crew, although clearly defined as uniforms, also responded to current fashion from the beginning of this history. Although the story of Qantas has been well documented, this thesis will focus on the uncharted area of the evolving design history of flight uniforms from the clinical white dress of the 1940s, through the military designs of the 1950s and the synthetics and stilettos of the 1960s, right through to the corporate designs of the present day. The analysis of such corporate design is a relatively new field. This study uses the flight attendants’ uniform to chart the links between the Australian fashion and textile industry and with militarism, versions of Australian nationalism and cosmopolitanism, the corporate world and the role of international designers in Australian design history. While the method of this thesis is largely archival, meticulously detailing the changing facets of the Qantas uniforms and unfolding those details into an engagement with these historical context, there are other theoretical influences on this study. In particular, it is underpinned by the ‘semiotics of uniformity’ drawn from fashion and design studies and by an equal focus on discourse analysis. The flight hostess’s uniform was always a complex ‘articulation of discourses’ as national image had to be played off against international trends, dominant and emerging gender norms, and the language of professional 'decorum' for people with high levels of responsibility and public exposure. Across each of these registers, the frisson of glamour was also a factor, morphing across this history from images of modernism and internationalism via the quasi-erotics of uniform fetishism into ‘postmodern’ performativity.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, many of the British government’s attempts to rebuild the social order and improve standards were experienced through design. This was true not only in the home and in the workplace, but also in the everyday civic environment of the street. Ensuring that objects as ubiquitous as lampposts, litterbins and parking meters adopted the visual language of modern design – while at the same time, remaining inconspicuous - was perceived as being vitally important by the authorities concerned. For it was through such objects that Britain’s new social and cultural agenda was given physical expression, and Good Design was deliberately introduced into people’s everyday lives. Yet for a category of object designed to be ignored, postwar street furniture prompted considerable debate. For some members of the public, the new designs were grotesque, and represented a defacement of the country and its landscape’s individual character. While for others, modern street furniture design was a means of civilizing Britain’s streets. The design of these objects also drew strong feelings from the groups involved with its improvement, including central and local government, the Council of Industrial Design and other state-advisory bodies, manufacturers, and civic groups. Sometimes this multi-layered group worked to improve the design of street furniture together, and sometimes in opposition. This thesis is concerned with the critical reception of street furniture design in postwar Britain, and the debate these objects prompted. It emerges out of an interest in the systems and structures underpinning design culture, and a belief that reading the banal built world expands our knowledge of how political power works. Rather than prioritise the designed objects themselves or the intentions of those responsible for producing them – such as the designers and manufacturers – the thesis will expand the debate to include the wide variety of contemporary viewpoints that were expressed, both in public and private, in response to the promotion, dissemination and design of modern street furniture. Extending the discussion beyond the official design narrative to other, equally important voices reflects a more accurate picture of the process through which street furniture was discussed, understood and even determined during this period. Using extensive primary material from archives, contemporary periodicals and newspapers, and interviews with street furniture designers practicing in the postwar period, the five chapters of this thesis address the different arguments employed by the multiplicity of voices active in the debate. While many of these arguments focused on dichotomies - between old and new, local and central, modern and traditional - the thesis contends that postwar dissent over street furniture was informed by wider debates about Good Design, design’s relationship to high and low culture, its social and moral responsibilities, and taste. The dominance of such themes throughout the thesis reflects the wider social context of the period, which witnessed considerable changes to the authority of its institutions and cultural hierarchy, as well as more timely debates about power, influence and class in the shaping of public life.

This thesis explores the way in which interior decorating developed as a practice during the interwar period in Britain and seeks to address broader contexts of gender, class, taste and styles. While traditional design histories have tracked the development of the interior design model through a direct sequence of movements and ideologies through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this thesis addresses issues which have been problematic within the context of art and design history. It acknowledges the more linear dimension of the original strand and seeks to offer a complementary appraisal which considers and appreciates the role of class, wealth and privilege and deconstructs boundaries which have marginalized gender and obscured certain important influences. The study examines the way in which decorators, many of whom were female, negotiated a design agenda which engaged with modernity without fully renouncing hard-fought signifiers of their class, taste and individuality. It argues that in the development of its practices, significant alliances were formed with fashion and that the vital role performed by media representation and social commentary underpinned its commercial profile and provided the public locus of its discourse. The nature of professional decorating is explored against a background of emerging practices in the first decades of the twentieth-century which included the antiques trade; grand scale establishments such as Lenygon & Morant, White Allom, Thornton-Smith and Keebles; department-store studios including those at Heal’s, Waring & Gillow and Fortnum & Mason; and individual practitioners and designers including Syrie Maugham, Sibyl Colefax, Dolly Mann and Ronald Fleming. In a period rife with social and political upheavals and conflicting ideologies as well as technological advancement and life-style changes, the study’s analysis aims to provide a broader understanding of the way in which decorators proactively negotiated such conditions and presented a cultural and aesthetic response to modernity through the diversity of their styles.

The ‘Avant-Garde’ in architecture seems a challenging subject: first, because the term has not yet clearly defined, despite the ubiquity of its use; second, because through that ubiquity it has become a buzz-word that is empty of precise meaning; third, because although this use includes the history of modern architecture, its application to this field has been largely unreflective and often unconsidered, as this thesis demonstrates. There is ambivalence as to which architectures are ‘Avant-Garde’ or should be regarded as ‘Avant-Garde.’ Therefore, there is a challenge in any question such as: what is the Avant-Garde in architecture? How can the architectural Avant-Garde be defined? What is the concept of the Avant-Garde in architecture? My thesis is a sociological conceptualization of the Avant-Garde in architecture. It is based on the mapping of the use the‘ term ‘Avant-Garde’ in architectural history, theory and criticism and its analytical tools are sociological. While it belongs to the above fields, it is informed by art theory and history, cultural studies, and the sociology of the professions, and includes sociological, cultural and political analyses. I suggest that the Avant-Garde is an Operation internal to architecture; a mechanism that does not only describe it but formulates it, motivates it, or else, influences our perception of it. I propose that the Avant-Garde is directed by prominent elements of its internal domain. It includes a filtering process, a rough selection process, and a selection process, by which one or more architectures internal conditions - are introduced to the discipline to renew the profession toward the desired and necessary, for the element who directs the operation, direction (see fig. 2, appendix). The end result of the selection process is what we commonly understand as ‘Avant-Garde’ architecture, e.g. Russian Constructivism or Bauhaus. I also propose that the Avant-Garde lies in and operates within the socio-ideological sphere of architecture and that renewal of the architecture's internal domain is necessary, thus the Avant-Garde is necessary, so as to make architecture respond to each time new external conditions and so endure, as a profession, over time. The Avant-Garde is for me an operation of renewal, a driver of difference and change in architecture (see fig. 1, appendix). The methodology adopted is as follows: I first introduce my analytical tools, some key sociological concepts, and concepts from the ‘Avant-Garde’ discourse (chapter 1). I then examine the filtering process and rough selection process in architectural history: I map the usage of the term in a historiographic corpus and arrive at the more frequently and the less frequently named ‘Avant-Garde’ architectures, which become my two case studies. These are Russian Revolutionary Architecture and Italian Rationalism (chapter 2). The third step is to arrive, through the comparison of my case studies, at those parameters that are crucial in being selected as ‘Avant-Garde,’ i.e. their ‘Avantgardification’ - this occurs after 1960 when the term starts being used describing architectures (part 2). The fourth step is to examine the period of the extended 19605 when the term starts appearing as a means of describing architectures and thus the selection process begins (chapter 6). As a fifth step I research the selection process in the discourse of architectural theory and criticism: I investigate in a particular corpus of writings which architectures, by whom they are chosen as ‘Avant-Garde,’ and the reason why, as Well as which are the concomitant effects of the usage of the term on architecture. In other words, beyond concentrating on which architectures or architectural movements are ‘Avant-Garde' in these writings, I focus on the effects of this selection and denomination (chapter 7). As a sixth step, I examine the selection process of my two case studies in architectural theory and criticism, i.e the Avantgardification of Russian Revolutionary Architecture and less of Italian Rationalism. I investigate when, by whom, and the reason why the first architecture is mostly selected as ‘Avant- Garde,’ as well as which are the concomitant effects on architecture (chapter 8, see also fig. 3, appendix). As a final step I examine the Avant-Garde as a sociological concept based on the key-concepts introduced in chapter 1 (Conclusions). A sociological conceptualization of the Avant-Garde is important for shedding light on issues beyond those of ‘Avant-Garde’ architectures. Through such a concept of the Avant-Garde we recognize issues of the profession, issues which are wider than questions which are directly connected to those architectures selected as such. Looking through the ‘Avant-Garde’ we understand the ways by which architecture is being renewed and Operated. By recognizing the conditions, in which the ‘Avant-Garde’ architectures have been created, and the way and time in which the term was employed to describe them, we understand the mode in which architecture, as a discipline, functions. My thesis is a hermeneutics of the architectural profession through the term ‘Avant-Garde.’

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Art History), September 2017 / This thesis analyzes how the Congo has been represented in modernist design situations, from colonial depictions to variegated forms of Congolese self representation. Architecture and art exhibitions in Euro-America and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are approached as points of contestation and intersection. The aim is to look at mutual dependencies and interrelations in modernist forms and spatial practices that migrate and mutate across huge distances and time spans. Links and recurring tropes are located in Art Nouveau total artworks in Belgium (circa 1890 -1905), Congolese objects in 20th century gallery space (from MOMA in the 1930s to 1970s Kinshasa), imperial remains from the early 1900s (in present day Mbanza Ngungu and Kinshasa) and the Africanist aesthetics of Mobutu Sese Seko’s era of retour a l’authenticité (1970s). In revisiting historic representations of the Congo, certain forms and spatial practices emerge, whose meanings are revealed according to how they engage with and are acted upon by their different contexts and temporalities. / XL2018

This research project operates from the perspective of the author as graphic design practitioner and considers how practice-based visual methods may be used to form a novel system of analysis in graphic design research. The focus of this research is the Conservative Party poster, produced for the British General Elections held between 1979 and 2010. With practice at the core of the research methodology, visual design methods have been configured and applied to a range of material in order to generate insights about how visual language is used in a variety of contexts. The research includes a review of the graphic communication of the British political poster, existing visual methods, and practice-based research within the field of graphic design. From there, a system of practice-based methods was devised, and then applied to the Conservative Party posters. The design system employs methods that disassemble each poster into its individual components (type, image, hierarchy, colour and negative space), mapping each using simple visual techniques, before reassembling these components to identify trends and insights in relation to various political themes. In order to test this design system, these methods were applied to a very different type of visual communication material produced for Sense, a charitable organisation that advocates for the rights of deaf-blind people. This proved valuable to the study, and demonstrated how this system could function in a very different context. The output of this study proposes potential visual devices for aiding visually impaired readers engage with photographic imagery. The findings and visual outputs of this investigation are described in this thesis, and are also housed in a series of three books that form the practice component of this research project. This thesis aims to highlight the value of practice-based methods within graphic design research, and specifically, methods more exclusively available to the graphic design practitioner. Practice is of central importance to this research project, forming the core of the methodology, as well as the outputs produced in response to the research findings. Through establishing the visual characteristics of the Conservative Party poster (1979-2010), this research seeks to demonstrate how a novel system of practice-based methods might help further an understanding of visual communication design.

This practice-based doctoral research project is an artist’s response to the ‘unique status’ ascribed to human remains in the DCMS Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums (2005): as objects, in scientific, medical/anthropological contexts, or subjects, which may be understood in associative, symbolic and/or emotional ways. It is concerned with the circumstances in which human remains were collected and interpreted in the past, and with the legacies of historical practice regarding their presence in museum collections today. Overall, it aims to contribute to public engagement concerning these issues. Taking the form of a Comparative Study the project focuses on the late nineteenth century, when human skulls were collected in great numbers for comparative anatomical and anthropological research, while in wider society the fashion for incorporating human hair into mourning artefacts became ubiquitous following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. William Henry Flower’s craniological work at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, where he amassed a vast collection of human skulls that he interpreted according to theories of racial “type” (in which hair was identified as an important distinguishing characteristic), is investigated, and its legacy reviewed. His scientific objectification of human remains is presented for comparison, in parallel, with the emotional and associative significance popularly attributed to mourning hairwork, evidenced in accompanying documentation, contemporary diaries, literature, and hairworkers’ manuals. Combining inter-related historical, archival- and object-based research with subjective and intuitive elements in my practice, a synthesis of the artistic and academic is developed in the production of a new “archive” of The Wildgoose Memorial Library - my collection of found and made objects, photographs, documents and books that takes a central place in my practice. Victorian hairworking skills are researched, and a new piece of commemorative hairwork devised and made as the focus for a site-specific presentation of this archive at the Crypt Gallery St. Pancras, in which a new approach to public engagement is implemented and tested, concerning the legacy and special status of human remains in museum collections today.

This thesis suggests a new framework for cooperative modeling which supports concurrency design protocol with a design history tracking function. The proposed framework allows designers to work together while eliminating design conflicts and redundancies, and preventing infeasible designs. This framework provides methods to track optimal design path and redundant design history in the overall design process. This cooperative modeling architecture consists of a modeling server and voxel-based multi-client design tool. Design change among server and multiple clients are executed using the proposed concurrency design protocol. The design steps are tracked and analyzed using Design Tracking Graph and Design Tracking Matrix (DTM), which provide a design data exchange algorithm allowing seamless integration of design modifications between participating designers. This framework can be used for effective cooperative modeling, and helps identify and eliminate conflicts and minimize delay. The proposed algorithm supports effective cooperative design functions. First, it provides a method to obtain the optimal design path which can be stored in a design library and utilized in the future design. Second, it helps capture modeling pattern which can be used for analyzing designer's performance. Finally, obtained redundancies can be used to evaluate designer?s design efficiency.

This thesis describes and interprets furniture produced in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) between c. 1800 and 1900 as part of a cultural 'dialogue' of everyday objects between Europe and Asia. By synthesizing the research methods of furniture history and material culture, the present work examines Ceylonese furniture within the context of the society in which it was produced and used. For the first time, the range of furniture produced on the island during the nineteenth century is categorized and defining characteristics of such furniture are outlined. In addition, and again for the first time, consumption of furniture in Ceylon during this period is examined and the place of these artefacts within the production of Western cultural practices is explained. Specifically, this thesis also contributes to an understanding of the history of Ceylon by interpreting the acquisition and use of western-style furniture by the indigenous social elite as part of the production of anglicized life-styles on the island. The present work contributes to debates centred on colonialism and culture by historicizing and localizing the furniture of the island. Such furniture, it is argued, in addition to its use value, reproduced European refinement and civility in the domestic interiors of Ceylon; in this way furniture, despite its quotidian nature, is taken to be expressive and constitutive of the colonial relationship between the British and Ceylonese. Through analysis of archival data, examination of the furniture itself and interpretation of the communicative capacities of these artefacts, explanation of the empirical and symbolic is combined in a new understanding of a substantial, but overlooked, part of the object-world of nineteenth century Ceylon. Through the process of developing and using a new conceptual framework for the interpretation of colonial furniture produced in Asia, a contribution is made to the study of furniture history and, more specifically, items of furniture from Ceylon are interpreted as materializations of human behaviour and constitutive elements in the production of culture.

This thesis argues that the significance of apartments in Sydney's urban history has not been recognised due to a cultural resistance to apartment living. This lack of acknowledgement has masked the urban, social and architectural impact of the apartment building type in Sydney's history. As an interdisciplinary reading of the development of the purpose-built apartment building in Sydney since its inception in 1900, the thesis is premised on a desire to use the apartment building as a vehicle to tell an alternative housing history to the more commonly told one of house and garden. In the process, it provides a different story of the city's development through the lens of the apartment building and challenges cultural prejudices against apartment living. The research documents the growth and changes of apartments, tracking their location, diversity of type and scale across the Sydney metropolitan region. The research analyses prototypical and generic apartment buildings in the context of the city's history. Drawing on the intersection of eras and themes as a method of critical inquiry, the thesis covers aspects of domestic debates, market, regulation, scale, demography, geography distribution, design and typology, traversing a time period of 1900 to 2008. The thesis explores the debates for and against apartment living in Sydney, emphasising the roles played by apartments in the broader discourses of Australian cultural and design history. The thesis concludes that after more than a century, the debates between apartment and cottage living continue to rage. In systematically providing a trajectory for the history of apartments from ideology to typology, this thesis establishes a place for apartments in Sydney's urban and cultural history; and simultaneously provides a deeper historical context to assist the process of better understanding and responding to the contemporary debate about high-density living and its consequences for the life of the city. Despite the size of its largely undocumented subject, this thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of its rationale: to use analysis of a specific, controversial building type to provide new insights into Sydney's urban history, ideologies and built forms.