This thesis examines how designs based on a conjunction between craft and digital techniques may offer new possibilities for an architect or designer in contemporary practice. How is it relevant that what initially appear to be two distinct approaches to designing and making can be introduced to each other and coalesce to form a constructive attitude of mutually borrowed logic? The thesis champions the crafting of innovative design and the incorporation of digitally derived procedures that allow for globally efficient dissemination and malleability. Such procedures have occupied the practice of architecture and design for some time, giving rise to the current sobriquet of a 'post-digital age'. I propose that at this point in time we can usefully speculate on the relationship between physical making and computer-based production. Too often the stylistic overtures popularly attached to the terms 'digital' and 'craft' narrow our perception of what each term may encompass and how they are likely to manifest. Traditionally, digitally derived design practice is attributed the efficiency of a mathematically precise mode of operation - an oscillation between zeroes and ones that produces a universal logic of smoothly rendered forms. By contrast, 'craft' is often cast into the realm of amateurish making, complete with mistakes, dropped stitches, fingerprints or other traces of human fault that are understood as being charming in the context of handmade human endeavour yet fall short when measured against 'serious' artistic categories that include architecture, design and fine art. This thesis seeks to move beyond such accepted and somewhat polarised positions. First, the thesis offers clearer and more dynamic definitions of the terms 'craft' and 'digital', seeking the ability for each to hold fast to the inherent merits of their particular logic while also finding productive opportunities to integrate with each other. Second, the thesis examines how crafted production can combine with digital tools to offer a useful direction for contemporary design practice. Case studies of contemporary architects' and designers' works are drawn on to illustrate and make observations on the different relationships that the selected practitioners have discovered in their projects, all of which conjoin the conception and manifestation of digital craft. The case studies vary in scale from fabric and furniture production to large-scale installations of significant spatial effect, to entire architectural projects. The range is useful in discussing how the concept of digital craft in architecture can be re ad from various perspectives. This reflects the numerous ways in which digitally created design is used to realise crafted results and is mindful of the fact that architectural processes often follow technological innovation first practiced at more intimate scales such as in industrial design. It is also interesting to compare the idea of the more intimately scaled relationship that craft has traditionally held with architectural practice. Finally, the thesis will speculate upon future developments for the conjunction of digital craft in architecture and design, and will pose several questions for further discussion.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, November, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-204). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 25-26).

Thesis (Ph.D.). / Written for the Dept. of German Studies. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2009/06/09). Includes bibliographical references.

Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-40).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Literature, June 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

This thesis proposes a critical study of the techniques and motives behind modern commodity feminist advertising, focusing on the appropriation of the “young girl” as a symbol of the feminist cause. This evolving trend in advertising, building upon new movements of empowerment and the recent proliferation of the online feminist space, is shifting the logics of consumption by marketing feminist ideology and activism through consumer purchasing power. By prompting consumers to believe that their purchases can make a significant change, companies are developing brand loyalty in their key marketing demographics by using the image and rhetoric of the “young girl” to tap into a term I call “anti-nostalgia,” a nostalgia whereby women leverage the inherent sentimentality of childhood with a constructive understanding and rejection of the destructively sexist climate they experienced to combat these sociocultural conditions for future generations. Joining theoretical research on branding, user-generated content, and the neoliberal ideology of the consumer-citizen, I argue that these advertising campaigns, coupled with online spaces for public interaction and participation, effectively create channels for their target consumers to contribute to this commodified form of activism. In reality, however, these “feminist” purchases are simply forms of consumer self-therapy in a modern political climate of systemic gender discrimination.

Digital technology has expanded the designer’s creative reach, but cannot duplicate the complexity of the imperfect and unexpected results of handmade processes. By executing a series of hand-built collage and assemblage pieces, I hope to not only rediscover the pleasure of working with my hands but also to develop creative methods to incorporate into future design projects. In this body of work, I have manually executed tasks that designers perform with software — cutting, pasting, layering, aligning, and creating transparency and drop shadows. The pieces are built from new and found materials, using text and images from old family letters and photos — physical evidence of relationships from my childhood and those of my parents and grandparents. These pieces express fragments of memories and family history.