Description
Book SynopsisMaterial Theories takes a radically new approach to well-established thinking on nineteenth-century architecture and design by investigating Gottfried Semper's classic ideas about dressing, metamorphosis of material, and cultural development, culminating in his two-volume publication Style.
This book demonstrates how Semper's theories crystallised among his encounters with material things of the late 1840s and early 1850s. It examines several discursive frameworks and phenomena which shaped the attitude to artefacts in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and which were specifically pertinent to Semper's evolution: archaeology and antiquarianism, the domestic interior, print media, collections, and the embodied relationship between the designer and their work. For the first time, this book examines the construction of a design theory not only as an intellectual endeavour but also as a process of confrontation with material things. It employs recent approache
Table of Contents
1.Acknowledgements 2.Introduction 3.Biographical Background 4.Outline of the book Chapter 1 - Analysis and experience: artefacts in archaeology and cultural history Chapter 2 - Speaking artefacts and reconstructions of the past Chapter 3 - Domestic space and the theory of decorative things Chapter 4 - Interiors and the education of taste Chapter 5 – Commodity and the Great Exhibition Chapter 6 – Artefacts and bodies Epilogue Bibliography Index
