craft + design enquiry Publisher Name Change

Recognising the industry-wide shift to digital publishing, ANU E Press has changed its name to ANU Press!

ANU Press will continue to function as an electronic, open access publisher. The change occurs in response to recognition that the publishing industry as a whole has embraced digital publishing, so the ‘E’ has become superfluous and the Press will be more appropriately served by a simpler, more encompassing brand.

 All works published henceforth will be branded as ANU Press works. Volumes previously published under the E Press badge will not be affected.

craft+design enquiry can be found at http://press.anu.edu.au/titles/craftdesign-enquiry/

Reminder: Current call for papers issue #7

  NOW CLOSED

“Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design” Issue 7: 2015,
Guest Edited by Kay Lawrence

Image credit: Sue Kneebone, For better or for worse, 2010, giclee print

Kay Lawrence invites contributors to submit abstracts responding to the theme “Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design” or to submit abstracts for the Open Section exploring subjects on any aspect of craft and design. 

Submit abstracts now until 30 April 2014, if invited, full papers are due 30 June 2014.


About the theme, Kay writes “The words used to describe the physical environment and our relationship to it, are always nuanced. The concept of 'place' refers to a particular portion of space that may or may not be occupied by people, while also encompassing the idea of dwelling, of living in a particular place.....

View full #7 Call for Papers link 

Craft and sustainable development: reflections on Scottish craft and pathways to sustainability

Craft and sustainable development: reflections on Scottish craft and pathways to sustainability

By Emilia Ferraro, Rehema White, Eoin Cox, Jan Bebbington and Sandra Wilson

1. Introduction

This paper discusses the potential contributions of craft to the transition to more sustainable societies. Craft, we argue, offers a number of leverage points where links between its economic and educational models and pathways to sustainability emerge. The paper, thus, contributes both to alternative and more creative definitions of “sustainability”, and to current debates on the “persistence” of craft and its role in “modern” societies (cf. Greenhalgh, 2006). Craft, we believe, can be seen no longer as existing against or in spite of modernity; on the contrary, in the context of sustainable development, it clearly emerges as “a modern way of thinking otherwise” (Adamson, 2009:5).

We begin with an introductory debate on the definitions of craft and the changing meaning of sustainable development over time. Using the data of a scoping study we undertook on the craft sector in Fife, East Scotland, we then discuss the common ground and leverage points between craft and sustainable development and make some concluding comments.

A remark about the authors is in order here. ‘We’ are three scholars in sustainable development, one scholar in art and design and the owner of a craft gallery. ‘We’ are at the same time two professional craft practitioners (one in jewellery and metal design and the other in furniture design), one ‘novice’ and two ‘hobbyists’. All of u share interests in and multiple engagements with sustainable development and craft that range from mainly theoretical to very practical involvement. It is this interdisciplinary background and array of different personal experiences that inform the discussion of both craft and sustainability put forward in this paper. Read complete paper

Introduction from: Craft and sustainable development: reflections on Scottish craft and pathways to sustainability

Full paper published in craft+design enquiry ; Issue 3 Sustainability in craft and design

Image:  Forms of craft enterprise discipline in Scotland

Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence

Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence
Jacqui Chan

Host A Brooch, making process, 2011.

Photography: Jacqui Chan craft+design enquiry Issue 5

Abstract: This paper traces a practice-led enquiry into the question of how jewellery — as a practice and an artefact — can engage the city in terms of emergence. While jewellery is often understood to have a decorative, symbolic or communicative function, this research explores jewellery’s immersion in and emergence from the urban context. Coming from a background in architecture, I am interested in approaching the city as an extended site for jewellery: both the lived situation within which jewellery is worn, and a rich material resource for its production; and, where jewellery is sited between mobile bodies and these urban surroundings.

This practice-led research adopts the analogy of the saprophyte — an organism that decomposes organic matter and recirculates nutrients through its ecosystem — as a logic for exploring how making and wearing can feed off and back into the material ecology of the city. This paper shares four projects that respond to specific urban situations — Melbourne, Ramallah (Palestine), Chinatown (Melbourne), and Christchurch — discussing what emerges within each situation, and what these projects offer for thinking about jewellery — as a practice and an artefact — and its relations with the city. Read complete paper

Abstract from, Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence  
Full paper published in craft+design enquiry ; Issue 5 A World in Making: Craft Design 

Void. Interstitial practices of doubt and reward

 Void. Interstitial practices of doubt and reward
By Marieluise Jonas and Heike Rahmann

Testing of Sakura tags, 2010. craft+design enquiry Issue 5

Abstract: As products of urban growth and decline, urban voids are spaces in transition from one stage of development to another. Their interstitial existence portrays a non-classifiable resistance and freedom to social and ecological conventions of the city.

This paper outlines our practice and approaches to working with the natures of urban vacant spaces in the context of growth and transformation in two cities with distinct socio-economic and cultural drivers that are mirrored in urban form and fabric: Tokyo and Melbourne.

Our practice in working with urban voids through mapping, design interventions, design strategies, virtual agency and writing are discussed alongside topics of appropriation, informality, design strategies and ecological processes. We argue that urban voids can serve as testing grounds for an idea of dynamic urbanism and a context-driven design practice in landscape architecture.

We also continue to negotiate our roles as landscape architects in relation to questions of program and the value of the role of design in the activation of these voids. Hence the positioning of our practice as an interstitial one where both doubt and reward are the outcomes. Read complete paper

Abstract of Void. Interstitial practices of doubt and reward

Full paper published in craft+design enquiry ; Issue 5 A World in Making: Craft Design

A World In Making: Cities Craft Design

A World In Making: Cities Craft Design, edited by Suzie Attiwill
ISSN 2200-6931 (Print version) $25.00 (GST inclusive)
ISSN 1837-445X (Online)
Published September 2013Citation url: http://epress.anu.edu.au?p=255421

Cover image: Urban Metabolism Series, Melbourne, 2009, referenced in the paper ‘Jewellery, the urban milieu and emergence’, by Jacqui Chan.

Photograph: Jacqui Chan

A World in Making:Cities Craft Design Issue 5 coming soon

 

Tokyo Void,  A World in Making: Cities Craft Design craft design enquiry journal  No 5

The fifth issue of craft + design enquiry,  "Worlds In Making: Cities Craft Design" is edited by Suzie Attiwill.   This issue explores the intersect between craft and design and the urban environment. NOW LIVE and can be downloaded or printed on demand at:    ANU E Press

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