The present thesis investigates educational aspects of material culture, examining the I.L.E.A./Camberwell Collection as a case study for the teaching of ‘good design’ in post-war Britain from 1951 to 1977. The methodological approaches used are drawn from the disciplines of design history, material culture studies, educational theory,museology and sociology. The main objectives of the thesis aim to examine ‘good design’ as an educational project, to establish the socio-cultural contexts that produced the I.L.E.A./Camberwell Collection, to relate these contexts to the premise of ‘good design’, and to assess the Collection’s educational affordances, both historical and contemporary. In order to illuminate how the I.L.E.A./Camberwell Collection represented the didacticism of ‘good design’, the investigation locates the historical and educational roots of ‘good design’ in relation to specific time-frames and practices, especially with regards to initiatives driven by government. The thesis examines good design’s alignment to the terms ‘modern’/‘modernism’/ ‘modernity’ as these have been used within design history, and it demonstrates how signifieds pertaining to ‘good design’ change over time. I have used Bourdieu’s theory of taste-formation to investigate the extent to which the formation of taste, as identified in the project of ‘good design’, had been implemented with regards to the I.L.E.A./Camberwell Collection in order to influence social positioning and consumer choices. However, the thesis argues that the modalities of language and vision,which Bourdieusian analysis relies on, need to be extended. I have therefore considered the contribution of ‘handling’ and I have argued its importance as an educational method. The thesis shows that as education in Britain evolved from didactic models to learner-centred, coconstructiveones, the Collection’s educational pertinence shifted from the aesthetic exemplar to the handling resource. The investigation demonstrates the significance of the I.L.E.A./Camberwell Collection as a resource in itself and as paradigmatic of object-based-learning. In addition, the thesis presents a methodological example of how a poorly-documented collection may be examined, thus adding new approaches to the repository of design historical research.

This thesis is concerned with the way that architecture, (that is space, buildings, cities and urban environments), has been and continues to be speculated upon through a rich palette of narrative methods. Taking NATØ, the group of young architects led by Nigel Coates that emerged from the Architectural Association in the early 1980s as its subject matter, the thesis questions how architectural production is able to narrate and the modes and methods it employs. The research reveals echoes and resemblances between NATØ projects and a wider artistic, filmic and literary culture that emerged from the specific political, social and physical conditions of 1980s London. Personal archives of original NATØ material – including drawings, photographs, magazines, ephemera and writings – are exposed for the first time. Combined with personal interviews with NATØ members and other significant individuals, the narrative traces the group’s evolution and development at the AA in Unit 10 in the late 1970s, to their active period between 1983-1987. The thesis also examines the key influences of Coates and his early work: exploring his relationship with Bernard Tschumi, the influence of a period spent in New York and his association with diverse artists and filmmakers in London. As such, the research presents the first detailed examination of NATØ and produces original insight into the territory of architectural narrativity. The thesis contextualises this moment of narrative architecture with the evolution of narratology over the same period – a discipline whose changing consideration of narrative in the 1980s expanded from a literary basis to take in a broad range of media. Engaging with contemporary narratology, the thesis employs concepts and terms from narrative studies to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of how narrative functions in architectural production. The thesis also constitutes a history of postmodernism that represents an alternative to the dominant architectural mode, considering NATØ’s output as a subcultural form of architectural production that drew on techniques of bricolage, montage, fragmentation, polyvocality and defamiliarisation. Framing NATØ’s work through an understanding of the way in which their use of medium evolved alongside their conceptual ideas, the thesis considers the material in relation to four distinct areas, each constituting a chapter: performance and video, the drawing, the magazine and the exhibition. Chapter 1 on performance and video exposes the influence of both Tschumi and a pivotal year spent in New York on Coates, and the development of his ideas from student to co-tutor at the AA in the late 1970s. The chapter proposes a move from the highly cerebral and literary approach of Tschumi, to one concerned with the presentness of direct experience via video. Chapter 2 takes the architectural drawing as its subject, showing how Coates evolved the drawing in his unit at the AA in the early 1980s, and how in turn NATØ employed the drawing as an 8 expressive narrative medium. Chapter 3 considers the group’s self-published magazine, NATØ, produced between 1983-85, drawing parallels with street style publications i-D and The Face, of the same era. The chapter proposes the graphic design of the magazine as a medium through which NATØ developed the explorations of the drawings into a more complex form – positing the idea of the mise-en-scène of the magazine. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the apotheosis of NATØ’s output: the exhibitions Gamma City at the Air Gallery (London, 1985), and Heathrow part of ‘The British Edge’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art, (Boston, 1987). Taking the ideas established in the previous chapter into three dimensions, the chapter proposes the installation as a microcosm of the narrative experience of the city that NATØ sought – evoked through an embodied drift through space, and the replacement of the architectural scale model with the auratic object or stimulator artefact. Concluding, the framework of narrative architecture set out in the thesis is proposed as both a period preoccupation and a way of thinking about spatial narrativity more broadly. It critical assesses the potential for such architectural narrativity to be designed and built, finding the truest form of narrative architecture emerging from the city condition itself. Finally, the conclusion proposes a lineage of projects and ideas that have evolved since the late 1980s whose concepts represent a continuation of NATØ’s preoccupations.

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Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 1991. / "The application of image-processing using the computer and Computer-Aided Design for the study of the urban environment, illustrated by the use of treatises in seventeenth-century architecture." Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 1991. / "The application of image-processing using the computer and Computer-Aided Design for the study of the urban environment, illustrated by the use of treatises in seventeenth-century architecture." Includes bibliographical references.

In the historical record of British theatre in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the figures of London’s actor-managers are constantly present. As such, over the intervening century, they have been subjected to detailed historical enquiry by any number of different scholars in terms of their theatrical achievements, management styles, and their role in the changing nature of theatre in this period. However, despite the vast amount of extant visual material pertaining to these individuals in British, and other, collections, little attention has been paid to the image of the actor-manager in this period, and still less to the role of the body in the legacy of such figures. Given the nature of the actor’s craft as body-orientated, the explicitly visual nature of theatre in this period, and a burgeoning mass-media industry intent on the dissemination of such images, from a design history perspective this historiographical gap is surprising. Taking as its starting point the contention that the primacy of London’s actor- managers in this period was not, despite the claims of some contemporaries, an inevitable result of natural talent, but rather the outcome of carefully mediated verbal and visual discourses of theatrical and social achievements, this thesis examines how the framing of the body in such texts and images contributed to the legacy of the actor-manager as the central figure of late-Victorian theatre for a number of different audiences. It does this by using a synthetic approach which encompasses a number of distinct disciplines, including theoretical perspectives on the body, theatre historical scholarship that informs the context of the primary material, and design historical narratives of production and consumption. Ultimately, however, it is led by the depiction of actor-managers in the late nineteenth century, and the manifestation of multi-valent identities through the body, which constructed them for popular and critical consumption as artists, professionals and gentlemen of the late-Victorian era.

The aim of this project is to examine the African textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum and how they reflect the historical and cultural relationship between Britain and Africa. As recently as 2009 the V&A’s collecting policy stated ‘Objects are collected from all major artistic traditions … The Museum does not collect historic material from Oceania and Africa south of the Sahara’ (V&A 2012 Appendix 1). Despite this a significant number of Sub-Saharan African textiles have come into the V&A during the museum’s history. The V&A also has a large number of textiles from North Africa, both aspects of the collection are examined. The division between North and Sub-Saharan Africa and between ‘art’ and ‘ethnographic’ museum collections is crucial to understanding the African textiles in the V&A. The V&A began collecting North African textiles in 1852 and went on to build a strong collection, particularly embroideries from the urban areas. The museum also acquired some Sub-Saharan African textiles during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During the 1920s the Textiles Department began to consider whether textiles from certain areas should be classed as ethnography. This was the most active period for collecting North African embroidery but the same process led to the exclusion and removal of Sub-Saharan African textiles. After World War II the Circulation Department actively collected West African textiles to tour to art colleges. The closure of the Department caused many of these textiles to be de-accessioned. The V&A has also collected textiles produced in Britain for sale in

Esta tese é uma investigação sobre a joalheria escrava na Bahia dos séculos XVIII e XIX, retrocedendo ou avançando no tempo quando necessário à melhor compreensão do fenômeno. Contribui para o aprofundamento e ampliação dos conhecimentos relativos à história do design no Brasil, no que se refere aos objetos classificados como afro-brasileiros, que são fruto da complexa relação senhor-escravo materializada na forma, na função e no significado do seu design. Adicionalmente, colaborou-se com os estudos da historiografia da escravidão em geral, com foco na participação negra no processo de formação da cultura materialbrasileira. / This thesis consists of an investigation about slave Brazilian jewelry in Bahia, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. In order to provide the best understanding of the phenomena, it goes back and further in time, as it turns out to be necessary. It contributes to both deepen and widen the knowledge on the history of design in Brazil, in relation to the objects classified as Afro- Brazilian, which are an outgrowth of the complex relation between masters and slaves, materialized in the shape, function and meaning of their design. Moreover, it intends to contribute to the studies of slavery historiography in general, focusing on the participation of black people in the building process of Brazilian material culture.

Esta dissertação tem como principal objetivo a introdução à obra do designer Ruben de Freitas Martins (1929 - 1968), apreendendo a sua trajetória e algumas das principais características criativas de seu trabalho. Ele iniciou sua carreira como artista plástico, derivando-a para o design até atingir a posição de empresário do setor, engajado na divulgação da profissão no Brasil. Nessa condição, durante a década de 60 dirigiu a Forminform, considerado o primeiro escritório de design do país. Na primeira parte da dissertação, com o intuito de analisar de forma eficaz e comparativa o seu trabalho, buscamos investigar e reconstruir a trajetória de Ruben Martins, sua formação profissional e o círculo social com o qual conviveu. Para tanto, foi realizado um levantamento de dados sobre a história e o contexto do designer, incluindo a coleta de matérias jornalísticas, artigos e entrevistas realizadas com personalidades que possuem informações sobre o próprio, como João Carlos Cauduro e Karl Heinz Bergmiller, além da constante pesquisa junto ao Acervo Pessoal de Ruben Martins, recolhido pela família. Na segunda parte, encontra-se a análise detalhada de um de seus principais trabalhos, a marca criada para a Rede de Hotéis Tropical (1967), \"leitura\" esta construída a partir do rebatimento das informações levantadas na primeira parte do trabalho. / This dissertation has as main objective the introduction to the work of designer Ruben de Freitas Martins (1929 - 1968), seizing his career and some key features of his creative work. He began his career as an artist, deriving her to the design to reach the position of manager of the sector, engaged in spreading the profession in Brazil. In this condition, during the 60´s, directed the office Forminform, considered the first design office in the country. In the first part of the dissertation, in order to effectively analyze and compare their work, we investigate and reconstruct the trajectory of Ruben Martins, vocational training and social circle with whom he lived. To that end, we conducted a survey about the history and context of the designer, including collection of news stories, articles and interviews with personalities who have information about him, as João Carlos Cauduro and Karl Heinz Bergmiller, farther the constant search with the Personal Collection of Ruben Martins, picked up by family. The second part is the detailed analysis of one of his major works, the brand created for the Network of Tropical Hotels (1967), the \"reading\" is built from information gathered in the first part of the dissertation.