This thesis focuses on the career of Philip Weiss in the furniture industry in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from 1950-1975, as the exemplar of a larger paradigm of émigré or foreigner culture, with a strong affinity to alienation, intellectualism, and Modernism. The thesis contends that the Jewish émigré was attracted to Modernist principles because of its abstract structure, rejection of tradition, and avant-garde framework. Jewish individuals became prominent in the arts associated with Modernism, such as design, architecture, photography, and painting. Modernism enabled artists to express themselves without adopting conventional subjects, forms, attitudes, and techniques, and made it well-suited for the émigrés’ position in the twentieth century. Modernism, with its attachment to intellectualism and exploration of new technologies and materials, was a natural fit for Weiss. Weiss arrived in Canada as a Holocaust survivor and immigrant, and began to reshape the narrative of his life through the furnishing of his identity. He became a furniture designer and manufacturer, and acquired status and respect in his community. Modernism played a significant role in his personal and business life, and initiated a lifelong connection with its tenets of progress, innovation, and creativity.

This thesis focuses on the career of Philip Weiss in the furniture industry in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from 1950-1975, as the exemplar of a larger paradigm of émigré or foreigner culture, with a strong affinity to alienation, intellectualism, and Modernism. The thesis contends that the Jewish émigré was attracted to Modernist principles because of its abstract structure, rejection of tradition, and avant-garde framework. Jewish individuals became prominent in the arts associated with Modernism, such as design, architecture, photography, and painting. Modernism enabled artists to express themselves without adopting conventional subjects, forms, attitudes, and techniques, and made it well-suited for the émigrés’ position in the twentieth century. Modernism, with its attachment to intellectualism and exploration of new technologies and materials, was a natural fit for Weiss. Weiss arrived in Canada as a Holocaust survivor and immigrant, and began to reshape the narrative of his life through the furnishing of his identity. He became a furniture designer and manufacturer, and acquired status and respect in his community. Modernism played a significant role in his personal and business life, and initiated a lifelong connection with its tenets of progress, innovation, and creativity.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-37).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1981. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-53).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1980. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-36).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 24-25).

Thesis (doctoral)--Lunds universitet, 1990.--Additional page with thesis statement inserted. / Cover title. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 284-288).

STATIC DYSTOPIA   One of the greatest transformations of our constructed physical spaces is taking place now and for a long time to come. The buildings we have created do not serve the needs and conditions of our time. They are exhausted of recurrent renovations and inexhaustible attempts to remodify already given forms, which result in expensive contracts. According to new EU-requirements scheduled 2019, no new buildings are allowed to consume more energy than they produce. And more restrictions concerning energy consumption of our existing buildings are raised around the western world to better match our present conditions regarding our decreasing resources. We have overbuilt ourselves with impractical structures that can not be modified for a natural change of our living conditions. They are too static and lack the possibility for rational reprogrammation. Instead of adapting them to future inevitable restruction, we make them even more static through passive housing.   Relevant architectural intelligentsia seem to be a thing of the past where we can find numerous examples of buildings that allows adaptability and room for reprogrammation. Meanwhile temporary refugee camps turn into constant growing cities. Whole cities and landscapes are changed during a day due to natural activities. They too lack potential reprogrammability because of its poor and barbarous approach to human living conditions. Our civilization has all the tools for changing this situation by building in a format that calculates the process of reprogrammation of physical environments. This problematic is not as relevant in furniture or interior, but can still be used with great success to improve our homes and working places. Staticism, in contradiction to reprogrammability, have fundamental values that can not be questioned when used for its’ right purpose, and it is not my intention to replace it. With rational solutions containing the combination of them both we can, and will have to, revaluate the way we construct our physical surroundings.   In my master degree project I am using my theory about reprogrammability to create a set of furniture that allows change in materiality, use, and function. This example should be considered as an exemplification of the thesis in a minor simplified scale rather than an object for actual use. The mounting of the furniture is based on a grid that allows easy assembly and reassembly of the various parts. The separated grids are shaped by their appurtenant c/c measurements (280 mm, 70 mm etc.), and are overlapping each other to allow construction symbiosis.

Over the last two decades a category of artefact has appeared that has come to be termed 'design art': highly expressive furniture and domestic products that are created as self-initiated, often limited edition designs, sold through galleries, exhibited in museums and collected in the manner traditionally ascribed to art. To date no in-depth theoretical analysis of the growth of such design has been conducted and key protagonists such as Droog Design have received little critical attention, as those involved have been largely left to write their own history. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to account for the development of these objects as the products of particular cultural and historical conditions and ask what the implications of the rise of these particular practices of making, distribution and use may be. This thesis proposes that close analysis of the objects, their form and functional potential, reveals their dialectical qualities, in that in their materiality the tensions and conflicts of the period of their development can be discerned. Through an account of the development of the market for such goods it examines the way in which these things can be studied as commodities, in that they can clearly be understood as status symbols or a form of cultural capital. It is also asserted that by regarding such design as having the potential to impact upon everyday life, and not just as existing as something to be consumed by an elite, such practices illuminate broader problems of the ethics of design in a wider sense. In this way it is argued that these communicative objects, in their ambiguous form and problematic relationship to function, can give an insight into the way we live with performative things: the ideological products of modernity that act upon us as we use them and which contain in their being the protocols and disciplinary forces of their time. The intention therefore is to ask whether design art can be seen as a politically radical practice that suggests ways in which both makers and users can assert a new relationship to the things with which we live.

I detta examensarbete har jag använt en designers formrepertoar och materialpalett och inspirerats av andra formgivares sätt uppdatera redan befintliga former. De produkter jag använt mig av är ett Parson bord och en lampfot. De material jag använd är kalkad ek, flock och rostfritt stål. Före, under och efter min formgivningsprocess har jag reflekterat över den mer övergripande frågan vad det är som gör något vackert, estetisk tilltalande. I arbetet har jag kommit fram till att det går att ta redan befintliga former och, genom designprocessen och valen man gör som designer, att göra de till sina egna.