著者

吉田 武夫

出版者

東海大学

雑誌

東海大学紀要. 教養学部 (ISSN:03892018)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.35, pp.1-20, 2005-03-30

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In this paper I shall try to apply an alternative approach to the Modern Design Movement. The approach is a method to decode "a classic" of the history of modern design. The Movement is classified into three levels. Those are individual activities, the relation between them and the connection of all activities. Therefor, it can be said that the aim of decoding "a classic" is to elucidate the structure of the Movement. As for the concrete procedure, the method of system analysis like below is quoted. 1) Specification of influences (inputs to a process or system) to each activities. 2) Decoding the contents (functions of a system) of activities. 3) The result (the output) of activities. 4) Specification of the organization and groups influenced by the results. The subjects of design activities as conversion systems are classified into three levels like movement, organization or group and individual. Here, however, the level of organization or group is mainly dealt with. In this paper, the author makes use of Pevsner's "The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design" which is a classic of the history of modern design as a model case. And the method mentioned above is applied to this book. The main results of decoding are as follows. 1) The each activities contributed to the Modern Movement plays a very important role in changing the initial value of factors which decided the characteristic of the Modern Design into the direction of the targeted value. The factors mean the criteria of evaluation to Pevsner as a historian. It is thought that this criteria were the means to select appropriate ones out of innumerable facts. 2) The relations between individual activities were supposed to be complicated networks which have bidirectional connections in some cases. However, the decoding for it was left as a future problem. 3) Figure 2 shows the total structure of Pevsner's "The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design". The factors as a whole are, so to speak, an appliance to measure the modernization of design activities. And the conditions are the scale of the appliance. This measuring instrument with scale is Pevsner's historical view, in other words, it is the framework of his history. The system constituted of various activities done by innumerable members which were measured with this appliance and given the higher evaluation than a certain level seems to be "Pevsner's history of modern design".