Design School Confidential

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Job:05-11998/12412 Title:RP-Design School Con dential

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n dential

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(RAY) Text

Job:05-11998/12412 Title:RP-Design School Con dential

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n dential

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project brief

Senior students are assigned sites to research in

the Honolulu area. These sites encompass a range

of areas, including Chinatown, Manoa (a residen-

tial district), and Mapunapuna (an industrial park).

Students are asked to research their sites and any

typography that they fi nd there. They then design

two books (11 × 16 inches [30 × 40.5 cm]; twelve

pages each—including cover) that consider the

site as both a “place” and a “space” (as defi ned by

the French literary theorist Michel de Certeau in

the quotes below). The books need to work in tan-

dem, and students are responsible for the actual

content of the text as well as any images. After the

books are designed, the students work together

to design an exhibitionary map of the combined

sites in a small student gallery. Students are asked

to explore the notion of the map in its widest pos-

sible terms (conceptually and physically) as well

as the unique qualities of exhibition and display.

Readings on the nature of display and mapping

are assigned and discussed to help students imag-

ine possibilities. Students are responsible for the

development, design, and production of the books

as well as the concept, design, and implementa-

tion of the gallery installation.

“A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever

kind) in accord with which elements are dis-

tributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus

excludes the possibility of two things being in

the same location (place). The law of the ‘proper’

rules in the place: the elements taken into con-

sideration are beside one another, each situated

in its own ‘proper’ and distinct location, a loca-

tion it defi nes. A place is thus an instantaneous

confi guration of positions. It implies an indica-

tion of stability.” —Michel de Certeau

“A space exists when one takes into consideration

vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables.

Thus space is composed of intersections of mo-

bile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the en-

semble of movements deployed within it. Space

occurs as the effect produced by the operations

that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make

it function in a polyvalent unity of confl ictual

programs or contractual proximities. On this

view, in the relation to place, space is like the

word when it is spoken, that is, when it is caught

in the ambiguity of an actualization, transformed

into a term dependent upon many different con-

ventions, situated as the act of a present (or of

a time), and modifi ed by the transformations

caused by successive contexts. In contradistinc-

tion to the place, it has thus none of the univoc-

ity or stability of a

‘

proper.

’

” —Michel de Certeau

project goal

The goal of this project is multifaceted. Students

learn to document, analyze, and interpret ty-

pography in the landscape, particularly as such

typography signifi es the unique identity of an

urban site. They then explore the book as a typo-

graphic “site” in its own right, and in its relation-

ship with the actual site. Extending the notion

of site to a gallery space, students imagine an

exhibition space as its own landscape—one that

maps the relationships between all urban sites

assigned in the projects and incorporates all the

books. Students learn to see the urban environ-

ment and its texts as a dynamic dialogue—one

that integrates public and private messages and

readings.

Class: Typography III

Level: Fourth Year

Faculty: Anne Bush

Duration of Project: Sixteen weeks

Reading the Urban Landscape

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University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Graphic Design Program

Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA

the projects 183

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