Vitrum Flexile, a storied design
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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en
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71
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Abstract
The project probes into the historical accounts and literary references to the elusive ancient flexible glass, as mentioned by classical authors such as Pliny the Elder, Dio Cassius, and Petronius. Despite reemerging during the Renaissance, the material is nowadays dismissed as a legend and lacked archaeological evidence. This project investigates the validity and the potential of recipes and claims from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century. In doing so, the research explores the convergence of design, historical, and chemistry domains, seeking to gain tacit knowledge by analysing documents extracted from books of secrets and monastic manuscripts — texts that were not originally intended to convey explicit information. An emphasis is put on the capacity of craftspeople to understand old techniques and create new ones based on personal and acquired experiential understandings. The project intends to narrate the story of flexible glass through a set of experiments and crafted materials. Practice-oriented methods thus take the concept of ancient flexible glass as a source for contemporary material explorations by questioning historiography in relation to recent disciplines of design research. Investigation design is mainly employed in this thesis. The methodology encompasses a multi-scalar approach of the subject of study and navigates unfamiliar environments to verify hypotheses through systematic testing. As a result, the research aims to demonstrate a way for contemporary design methods to contribute new knowledge to historical techniques. Additionally, the project highlights how classical studies can be a material to design, opening novel directions for the discipline.Description
Supervisor
Lohmann, JuliaThesis advisor
Van der Lei, Anna-MarieNiittymäki, Mira