Edward Hollis

Bio: Edward Hollis is an academic researcher from Edinburgh College of Art. The author has contributed to research in topics: Interior design & Architecture. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 19 publications receiving 53 citations. Previous affiliations of Edward Hollis include University of Edinburgh.

Bachelors of a Different Sort; Queer aesthetics, material culture and the modern interior in Britain

Abstract: John Potvin begins Bachelors of a Different Sort on an intimate note. He has just got married, he tells us, in the home in which he now lives with his husband. They have ceased to be bachelors.Let ...

No Longer and Not Yet

Abstract: The forest of Kilmahew, around twenty miles west of Glasgow, conceals an architectural cautionary tale. In the 1960’s, the landscape was radically transformed by a building. St Peter’s seminary was built to house around a hundred catholic novices. Its plan and section, the work of the architects Gillespie Kidd and Coia, were a rigorous statement of the modernist maxim that form follows function. But within a decade, there were not enough priests to fill it; and St Peter’s became a form without a function. That was 1987, and since then it has resisted numerous attempts to provide it with a new one: designed as closely as it was to a specific programme, the building remains empty, and derelict. It is no longer what it used to be, and not yet what it can be. The caution is simple: design a building programmatically, and you’ll end up with a ruin. This author has been involved since the Venice Biennale of 2010 with a new proposal for St Peter’s led by the Glasgow arts collective NVA (Nacionale Vitae Activa). We have no images of what it will look like, or when it will be ready. St Peter’s isn’t going to be restored any time soon. Instead, we propose to leave the building perpetually incomplete – both ruin and building site. It’s a model of what all buildings should be: they are, in environmental terms, expensive. We shouldn’t be building more of them, but rather, exploiting and transforming the ones we already have, again and again. St Peter’s was originally designed to teach moral lessons, but now it presents a different ethical challenge. This article will narrate NVA’s proposals, and set them in the context of the modernist ethics they question, arguing for a different discourse, of suspension in time – in being no longer and not yet. DOI: 10.14324/111.444.amps.2013v3i2.000

The House of Life and the Memory Palace: Some Thoughts on the Historiography of Interiors

Abstract: Interiors evade the neat taxonomies of style and narratives of progress that have traditionally dominated the history of art and architecture. Interiors are temporary arrangements: the meeting places of building, lining, furnishing, and occupation. The historic interior is never a complete, unitary artifact, and the history of interiors possesses no fixed canon. The historic interior may only ever be apprehended through traces and secondary sources. Once an interior has passed away, its constituent elements are incorporated into other interiors; and all interiors, are, to some degree or another, made out of the remnants of others; and this means that the history of the interior can never enjoy the linear clarity of the histories of architecture or product design, which involve to a large part the creation of new artifacts. This article explores the vanished interiors of one palace through the lens of another. The first is The House of Life, an apartment in Rome dwelt in by the writer Mario Praz, w...

Design Research through Practice

Abstract: In this thesis, I argue that in a world characterised by change, contemporary interior designers lack competent guidance on how to interpret and design notions of impermanence, and how to experiment through practice with ways of doing so. The thesis presents a considered investigation into how the concept of 'collapsibility' might contribute to interior design processes while challenging what it describes as the 'current principles of permanence and stability'. Its central argument is: collapsibility should not be understood merely as a mechanistic or functional response to modern life, but rather as a folding, and unfolding and then refolding event, constantly changing and merging in fields of forces. Collapsibility is a commonly used concept for designing objects with predefined functions such as space saving, as described in Collapsibles: A Design Album of Space-Saving Objects by designer Per Mollerup (2001). This research extends beyond such teleological approaches to the concept of collapsibility as a mere mechanism, to suggest that the concept of collapsibility can be understood in a wider prospect as a design approach for both understanding and designing notions of change and impermanence in the 21 century. While my primary definition of the concept of collapsibility in this thesis is informed by designer Per Mollerup’s approach in his album ‘Collapsibles’, my extended approach of the concept of collapsibility in relation to impermanence and change is informed by a wider conceptual framework that is constructed through use of literature: The Fold by Deleuze, Form-Finding by Frei Otto and Soft Logic by Michel Serres. This conceptual framework developed in tandem with my hands-on approach of observing and making collapsible events using semiotic analysis and design practices as prime methods. I analyse collapsible events that happen throughout an everyday life and collapsible events of Bedouin tents. I then make collapsible structures to experiment with how collapsible events operate in a tangible way. These various explorations resulted in a new framework of the concept of collapsibility, in which I explore its practical application in guiding a design process, of collapsible floor prototype, that challenges common design approaches of permanence and stability. Finally, I discuss practical and theoretical remarks of the thesis and conclude that the concept of collapsibility should be seen as a new way of thinking that assists designers in interpreting and designing notions of change and impermanence as they continue to emerge within interior design and architectural fields. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 Research Introduction ............................................................................. 1 1.1

Cultural Criminology and the Politics of Meaning

Abstract: Cultural criminology focuses on situational, subcultural, and mediated constructions of meaning around issues of crime and crime control. In this sense cultural criminology is designed for critical engagement with the politics of meaning, and for critical intervention into those politics. Yet the broader enterprise of critical criminology engages with the politics of meaning as well; in confronting the power relations of justice and injustice, critical criminologists of all sorts investigate the social and cultural processes by which situations are defined, groups are categorized, and human consequences are understood. The divergence between cultural criminology and other critical criminologies, then, may be defined less by meaning than by the degree of methodological militancy with which meaning is pursued. In any case, this shared concern with the politics of meaning suggests a number of innovations and interventions that cultural criminologists and other critical criminologists might explore.

Design learning for tomorrow

Abstract: Designed artefacts and solutions influence our lives and values, both from a personal and societal perspective. Designers, decision makers, investors and consumers hold different positions in the design process, but they all make choices that will influence our future visual and material culture. To promote sustainability and meet global challenges for the future, professional designers are dependent on critical consumers and a design literate general public. For this purpose design education is important for all. We propose that design education in general education represents both a foundation for professional design education and a vital requirement for developing the general public’s competence for informed decision making. Utgivelsesdata Tittel:Design learning for tomorrow : design education from kindergarten to PhD : booklet of the 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers : 14-17 May 2013, Oslo NorwaForfatter(e):Janne Reitan, Ingvild Digranes, Liv Merete NielsenSerie:HiOA rapportIssn:1892-9648Nr:2013 nr 6Utgiver:HiOAAvdeling/fakultet:TKDSider:243Pris:330,– ISBN-print:978-82-93208-38-9

Petit trianon and marie antoinette: representation, interpretation, perception

Abstract: My Dos between 2010-2014 was Professor Daniel Maudlin. I have belonged to the Faculty of Arts for this period, before transferring in the last year of completion to the Faculty of Business. I had to seek the expertise of the School of Tourism due to the interdisciplinary nature of my thesis.