LOOKING ELSEWHERE: Magpie Methods of Creativity in Design

Amateur ornithology of the thieving magpie is Annemie van den Heever and Christiaan van Aswegen’s latter day Smithsonian attempt to rehabilitate the much maligned and most misunderstood of avian design strategies: the collage. Try not fret too much; it’s only natural to look elsewhere...

To paraphrase the iconic declaration of Peter and Allison Smithson: We are not here to talk about the nature of beauty. In fact what we aim to discuss is how we are duty bound to create beauty and how to go about it. Of course being duty bound to beauty is stock in trade for anyone involved in either design or art. Setting aside the obvious loaded nature of the word beauty, and the inevitable rebellion incurred by any sense of obligation, one cannot help but ask: where do I start? Does beauty simply happen, springing fully formed from the mind of the designer/artist? Can it be drawn as if by magic from thin air? Probably. Almost certainly if one has an unlimited amount of time, infinite resources and adoring patient patrons. If however one is perpetually called upon to produce sublime solutions on time, on budget and within reason things get a little sticky. Often deadlines loom large, concepts are thin and few and thinking seems the leisurely pastime for delicate academics. In short how can one tap into the surely infinite reserve of beauty when you need it most?
The answer we believe lies in the montage. Or more properly the collage...

Annemievdh What exactly do you mean by collage?
Christiaan I am borrowing a term from fine art.
What I mean is the collection of images, which when recombined creates a new whole.
I suppose the danger is that if one is taken too literally you may end up in the dangerous territory of pastiche - simply picking elements at random and combining them in a crude thoughtless manner. Thus not creating a consistent integrated whole. Even by the fine art definition an object cannot properly be called a collage unless its constituent elements combine in such a way that a new coherent whole is created. Look for example at the paintings of Picasso in his early cubist phase. A series of discreet elements are composed to form connotative assemblies and pictorial balance. However when it comes to architecture, I suppose what I mean is simply having a large cache of images at your disposal, both figuratively and literally. Much in the same way a grand master chess player does not memorise an entire strategy, but rather draws on a collection of 'movement patterns'.
In doing so one ends up with 'patterns' which can be recombined at will to suit various solutions.
Do you suppose that this is too closely affiliated to Christopher Alexander and Yona Friedman's ideas of 'patterns'?

Annemievdh It is indeed very similar to Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language. Alexander tried to identify objective typologies that can be applied to urban design and architecture – he avoided the issue of aesthetics, by avoiding subjectivity. To me it seems like you are referring to typologies and aesthetics, when you are referring to a collage in design.
Christopher Alexander was more prescriptive about the patterns that should be applied; collage is more open-ended. One of the problems that arise from this inherent open-endedness is that even a collage that is put together well, can still be unseemly. For example, themed design: the object might be designed well but because it is a combination of archaic ideas, it is unbecoming.
Explain why you think you need to make a collage of images - be more specific.

Christiaan The point of this collage of images is to get to the connotative meaning embodied in the images...
The closest approximation to the method I am proposing is the one employed by fashion designers
I was recently watching a documentary about the work Mark Jacobs has been doing as head of design at both Louis Vuiton and his own titular brand.
Being hard pressed to come up a rich concept for the fall/winter shows of both houses he collected a series of images;
some taken from his travels; some from magazines; some from the web; and posted them all on a wall.
He then sat down with his team and assessed the inherent trends that these images were speaking to.
Annemievdh ...but you forget that architects go through considerable effort to avoid trends...
Christiaan That is a stylistic caprice evident only since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Ironically at the same time collage came into its own as a form of artistic expression.
What the process aims to do is give one a large resource base upon which to draw solutions which may seem counter intuitive.
From your tone I assume you disagree?
Annemievdh No, I don't disagree, but I still don't know how you are going to sell the idea of a collage to architects. You told me the other day, that at the University of Pretoria they are advising the architecture students to avoid magazines, and not getting informed by anything external - but only responding to practical problems.
Christiaan I am not selling anything. What they are opposed to is pastiche.
Lecturers at the above mentioned university do not want students to pick at random building elements and then thoughtlessly combine them.
But this fear is leading them to throw out the baby with the bath water.
How is one supposed to build up a decent range of precedent when you are not allowed to look at a variety of examples?
I am suggesting that students/architects are encouraged to become visually saturated.
Annemievdh By avoiding looking at published work, they are breeding architects with a narrow frame of reference.
Christiaan Exactly.
But what I am proposing is not limited to architecture, designers should immerse themselves in the ephemera of the time in which they live.
Annemievdh If you don't have a frame of reference, you are going to end up getting inspiration from your previous design, or the person sitting next to you in studio.
Because it is unavoidable – you are going to get inspiration from somewhere.
Therefore the bigger your frame of reference, the better your chance of a sophisticated design.
Christiaan Agreed.

Asger Jorn's exhibtion was accompanied by the following text: “In this exhibition I erect a monument in honour of bad painting. Personally, I like it better than good painting. But above all, this monument is indispensable, both for me and for everyone else. It is painting sacrificed. This sort of offering can be done gently the way doctors do it when they kill their patients with new medicines that they want to try out. It can also be done in barbaric fashion, in public and with pomp. This is what I like. I solemnly tip my hat and let the blood of my victims flow while intoning Baudelaire’s hymn to beauty.” The original paintings were amateur paintings from anonymous artists in Paris flea markets to which he added his own “creative vandalism”. In this instance (L’avant-garde se rend pas (The Avant-Garde Doesn’t Give Up)) an obvious reference was made to Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q . FORD 2005:66)

Christiaan But to bring this whole conversation to a sharp point.
What I am driving at is a call for designers to keep up.
The way that the Smithson’s exhibition in the early days of the new Brutalists called on people (architects and others) to look at the world they live in.
Look at its media
Look at the quality of spaces we live in
Start there
Annemievdh ...and look at what is important for the society that you live in...
I don't think there is a single culture that does not consider beauty important.
Christiaan Ours certainly does.

Wikipedia, free online encylopedia, definition of collage:
“The Guggenheim Museum's online art glossary plainly states that Braque and Picasso invented collage — which would obviously imply that any earlier artworks which might technically have anticipated collage were nevertheless not collage. Collage, according to these sources, is an artistic concept associated with the beginnings of modernism and entails much more than the idea of gluing something onto something else. The glued-on patches which Braque and Picasso added to their canvases "collided with the surface plane of the painting." This was part of a methodical re-examination of the relation between painting and sculpture, and these new works "gave each medium some of the characteristics of the other," according to the Guggenheim essay. Furthermore, these chopped-up bits of newspaper introduced fragments of externally referenced meaning into the collision: "References to current events, such as the war in the Balkans, and to popular culture enriched the content of their art." This juxtaposition of signifiers, "at once serious and tongue-in-cheek," was fundamental to the inspiration behind collage: "Emphasizing concept and process over end product, collage has brought the incongruous into meaningful congress with the ordinary." Arguably, any work of art which involves the application (with glue or by any other means) of things to a surface, but which lacks this purposeful incongruity, this quality of fragmented signifiers colliding, is not truly collage in any important sense.”

References:
1. Archigram, 2009. Retrieved: January 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archigram
2. Collage. 2008. Retrieved: January 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage
3. FORD, S. 2005. The Situationist International: A User’s Guide. LONDON: Black Dog Publishing.
4. L’avant-garde se rend pas (The Avant-Garde Doesn’t Give Up) defiguration, 1962. Retrieved: January 2009, from www.notbored.org
5. Loïc Prigent's documentary, "Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton,"
http://www.hypebeast.com/image/2008/08/marc-jacobs-documentary-01.jpg
6. New Babylon, 2009. Retrieved: January 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Babylon_(Constant_Nieuwenhuys)
7. HIRSCHHORN, T. Utopia Station. Retrieved: January 2009, from http://www.e-flux.com/projects/utopia/art/066hirschorn/index.html
8. FRIEDMAN, Y. Portikus, 2008. Retrieved: January 2009, at http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5224