The importance of a Design Language & the Design Process

Carolina Lineros Ordúz

GD Interior Design

Theory and writing

31 January 2022

The importance of a design language lies on it being the way to communicate our ideas and the whole design process since its conception.

As a designers we almost always have a fixed starting point when set out to create a new piece or space, whether it is a message, an image, an idea or an action. We almost always have an inspiration, the source from the concept essence is taken. Since our job is to communicate something that already exists, to fulfill a need, or for a purpose, rather than to invent something new, that purpose need to be properly and effectively communicated in order to motivate and satisfy the audience (inhabitants, clients, spectators) and produce an essential spiritual emotion. Perhaps designers do not invent anything new but the expression of that idea, the design language, differs from ones to others, making each one of us unique. And to achieve this long-pursued uniqueness it is necessary to have some elements in mind: coherence, cohesion, a strong thesis, cultural context, consistency and identity.

It is important to understand what a design language is, discover how to develop one of your own one, and understand that as Interior Designers we design human interior environments and for that simply reason the place to start is ourselves. Taking the words of Philip D. Plowright (2019) in his book Making Architecture Through Being Human: “our engagement in our environment has shaped the way we think which we, in turn, use to then shape that environment”. And for that simply reason I want to explain the importance of the Design Language starting with my own one.

My Roots... My Design Language

A language of a female architect born in Colombia with some years of professional experience at Octubre Studio, who has developed a very personal interest in Interior Design; based on my relationship with my surroundings, to our roots; the language of someone who has developed her own design brand, Casa Collage (@casa_collage.co), derived from the interest and love for natural materials and specially for Fique (Furcraea andina) with the hope of that my work could help shaping new ways into inhabited spaces, through the exploration of our own identity in an over-globalized world.

Fig. 2. My screenshot (OCTUBRE - Cuatro Espacios, 2018)

It seems like that I have been consciously suspended between two worlds: On the one hand, the aesthetic of Octubre Studio whose presence as an universal impulse I cannot deny; on the other, the memory of my childhood as a member of an entire family of “Santanderian” (people from Santander, Colombia) roots.

Octubre Studio was founded by Guillermo Arias, a Colombian architect and designer who just after finishing his own studies, opened a firm where he manufactured products made mainly from elements found in demolitions and scrap deposits. Born from a combination of architecture and design, this fusion has allowed Octubre Studio to development of projects with its own identity which constructive details and lighting are the main characters, and where design answers are related to the research on materials such as steel, iron, bronze, natural stones, marble and wood. Metal works are the core of the firm and it is at Octubre metal workshop where most of the pieces are manufactured and in the personal projects (the Studio itself, Guillermo´s flat and his Honda holiday House) where the ideas are experimented.

The other world, Santander, is a department (state) located in the Central North-eastern part of Colombia, where people have been specially recognized for their bravery in battle, since the colony and independence war times, and their policy of “not even a step back”. With its stunning natural scenery and lovely little towns and villages, Santander is one of the most popular regions for tourism, and the home place of the Chicamocha Canyon, a majestic sight. And, above all, is the place where Fique and the artisans handwork stole my heart. These surely are the two fundamental references that formed my personal critique of the consumerist present: on the one hand, a personal remembrance of an expansive, timeless past; on the other a sharp awareness of the accelerated ruthlessness of ´modern´ societies high-speed technological civilization. Technology has, in my opinion, distanced itself from natural systems, favoring fuel by fire and right now is haunting us. While ´modern´ societies are trying to conquer Nature in the name of progress, others like indigenous cultures are working with Nature.

That is why I urge a new simplicity, a literal going-to-the grounds, for rooting oneself in the integrity of the land as a way of sustaining the habitability of the Earth. And it is where the ideas and the architecture of Luis Barragán, The Mexico´s modern master, come as an inspiration for my entire work. For Barragán, the sustainability of earth dwelling was the critical role to be played by the “unbuilt” in relation to the “built” by landscape in relation to architecture. Hence, my next step: to work with Nature, using traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and researching indigenous cultural practices in order to reach and understand the symbiosis with Nature. Those indigenous technologies could offer a new path to exponentially shrink the ecological footprint of humankind and mitigate the forecasted collapse.

Fig. 3. My Screenshot (Chicamocha Canyon, 2022) Fig. 4. My screenshot (Santander, Colombia, 2022) Fig. 5. My screenshot (Barichara and Juan Curí, 2022)

A powerful example is the Apete Forest Islands of the Kayapó people, in Brazil. Comprising an area the size of Kentucky, according to Watson (2020), the Kayapó territory has protected one of the largest tracts of tropical rainforest on Earth. There is no division between the spiritual and daily aspects life. Cosmology and mythology are integral to the Kayapó existence, and their villages are featured in a series of concentric circles, designed in a way that can be traced back to their use of fire and to the origin story of people, as a reflection of the mythological creation of the universe.

Fig. 6 Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism digital drawing illustrated a Kayapó´s village (Watson, 2020, p.184)

Casa Collage, My Only Child, My Design Experiment, My Laboratory of Ideas

My deep interest and research in the concept of the space and how human beings dwell in the spaces as well as the awareness on how architecture and design are way too far from the idea of a home, were further incentivized after reading “Casa Collage: un ensayo acerca de la arquitectura de la casa” (Casa Collage: an essay about the architecture of the home).

This book is a compilation of several reflections on home where “home” is simultaneously, origin and destination: the home that people imagine; the home that people have in their minds; the home as a “collage”, a place formed by different ideas and hypothesis, a “Casa Collage”. This book was the inspiration source where I took the name of my design brand from. Created five years ago with the purpose in mind to go beyond what is a traditionally defined as an architectural project (plans, drawings, models), at Casa Collage I believe that my work could help shape new ways to inhabit and experience spaces. Casa Collage is focused on those furniture and objects that human beings share the spaces with, and that we imprint personality and character through, to what was built. In that sense, I agree with what Monteys and Fuertes (2001) wrote in their book Casa Collage: “Houses vary between one and another as the objects of the house do. Some furniture, objects and appliances are repeated in many of them, others however, are unique to a place, a culture or a lifestyle”.

Fig. 7.Casa Collage Cestos (2018) Fig. 8. Casa Collage Coffee Tables (2018)

For that reason, it is important to define a National Identity that can be applied to my brand as well as Casa Collage could help building it: a Colombian identity; a Latin-American one. And Casa Collage would be a Spanish Speaking brand, but a Latin-American Spanish, with all its shades; one that reflects and reinterprets graphic patterns of our culture, using local materials; one that understands the indigenous philosophy and rebuilds on our (Colombian and Latin-American) vernacular architecture that generates sustainable, climate-resilient infrastructures. With the ultimate objective of use language to construct a single cultural identity.

Plans and Colours; Fique and Indigenous

Technology; Water and Light

Thinking about Design Language and the way that all my experiences, as a designer and human being, melted to give shape to it, some concepts come to my mind: Plans and Colours; Fique and Indigenous Technology; Water and Light.

Plans or surfaces, discovered through my architectural work, the envelopes of the volume divided according to the generators and the directing vectors of the volume, accentuate the uniqueness of it, in terms of Le Corbusier. It is the supreme entity and the inhabitant of a larger metaphysical landscape, “a screen for revealing the hidden colours of Mexico”, in terms of Barragán, where colours could have been revealed, the colours of my culture's cosmological imagery; the colours of the tropical rainforest; the colours of a multicultural nation (Colombia); the colours of its vernacular architecture, for me. At this point, it is important to mention an extract from Le Corbusier´s thesis, presented in Rome in 1936: “ Colour in architecture a means as powerful as the ground plan and the section. Or better: polychromy, a component of the ground plan and the section itself”. Plans and colours; these are the elements that I took to enhance and highlight the connection between the water bodies in my work-rest-play project, generating a horizontal axis, an analogy with the maloca (a model of indigenous dwelling).

“Jacanamijoy´s work evoke a deep connection to the memories, heritages, and environments which shape us.” - ministryofomads.com (2022)

Fig. 9. My screenshot (Amanecer en Flor, 2018)

Fique and Indigenous Technologies. Rethinking the human being relationship to everyday things and imagining a future of clean materials and a circular economy could point towards the usage of materials and fibres that not only are natural and produced in our territories; but also could be reused after wasted. Even more, it would be possible to look back to indigenous technologies that offer solutions to climate change, that “could change the way we design cities” according to designer and environmentalist Julia Watson (2020). In my opinion, we need to reconnect with understanding our relationship with her and her cosmos, and beginning to conceive our spaces as the symbolic reconstruction of the universe, urge a Lo-TEK technology; a design by Radical Indigenism as Watson (2020) argues in her book, because progress requires a new toolkit, adopting some of the principles of indigenous design, many of which are thousands of years old, to help communities around the world to not only mitigate the impact of climate change, but to become resilient for the future.

Fig. 11. Fique Workshop (2018)

That, for sure, will inform my future practice. Living in a country with an extraordinary diversity of climates, vegetation, soils and crops and where indigenous groups stick to the ways of life and traditions of their ancestors, it becomes necessary to go back to my roots as designer and architect, and revisit the idea that the land itself was breathed into being by human consciousness. I do think, as the Incas do, that the land is alive, and a dynamic force to be embraced and transformed by the human imagination. A new architecture of the heart, informed by the beauty and the pure design, with materials as simple as the sun, that yield new possibilities. With forms so delicate, so functional, and so perfectly aligned with the axis of the spirit, they will inspire a totally new dream for the Earth.

“Design and architecture allow us to develop identity, through the experimentation and learning for everyone involved”- Guillermo Arias (2018)

Fig. 10. My screenshot (OCTUBRE - Cuatro Espacios, 2018)

Finally, Water and Light. Two key pillars of Barragán´s architecture and two elements that have been always present in Octubre´s Design Language and in my own. In that way, I am completely in agreement with Barragán when he assures that if water expresses the significance of union and maternal fertility, light is a direct evocation of the presence of God. Water and light unite, and the more persuasive their union, so much more profound is the silence that results.

REFERENCES

Plowright, P. (2019) Making Architecture through Being Human, A hand book of design ideas. Milton: Taylor and Francis Group.

Zanco, F. (2001). Barragán Foundation; Vitra Design Museum. Luis Barragán: the quiet revolution. Milan: Skira.

Martínez, A. (1996). Luis Barragán: Mexico´s modern master, 1902-1988. New York: Monacelli.

Burri, R. (2000). Luis Barragán. London: Phaidon.

Fuertes, P. and Monteys, X. (2014) Casa Collage: Un ensayo sobre la arquitectura de la casa. Barcelona: GG.

Rüegg, Arthur Le Corbusier Polychromie Architecturale. Basel: Birkhäuser, Third revised edition

Le Corbusier Toward a New Architecture, Introduction by Jean Louis Cohen Translation by John Goodman (2007). Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications.

Castaño-Uribe, C. (2019) Chiribiquete La maloka cósmica de los hombres jaguar.

Mesaestándar - Sura - Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia.

Zumthor, P. (1998) Thinking Architecture. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser.

Watson, J. (2020) Lo-TEK Design by radical Indigenism. Cologne: Tashen.

List Of Illustrations

Figure 1. OCTUBRE - Cuatro Espacios (2018). [Screenshot] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEYgpOPLg&t=133s

Figure 2. OCTUBRE - Cuatro Espacios (2018). [Screenshot] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEYgpOPLg&t=133s

Figure 3. The Culture Trip (2022) Chicamocha Canyon. [Photograph] Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/colombia/bucaramanga/experiences/chicamocha-national-park-full-day-private-tour-including-lunch (Accessed: 07 January)

Figure 4. The Culture Trip (2022) Santander, Colombia. [Photograph] Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/colombia/articles/the-top-10-things-to-see-and-do-in-santander-colombia/ (Accessed: 07 January 2022)

Figure 5. The Culture Trip (2022) Barichara and Juan Curí Waterfalls. [Photograph] Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/colombia/bucaramanga/experiences/barichara-and-juan-curi-waterfalls (Accessed: 07 January 2022)

Figure 6. Watson, J. (2020) Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism. Cologne: Tashen.

Figure 7. Duck Sessions (2019) Casa Collage Doblez Cestos. [Photograph]

Figure 8. Duck Sessions (2019) Casa Collage Renacimiento Coffee Tables. [Photograph]

Figure 9. Ministry Of Nomads “Amanecer en Flor” (2022). [Screenshot] Available at: https://ministryofnomads.com/artists/41-carlos-jacanamijoy/ (Accessed: 06 January 2022)

Figure 10. OCTUBRE - Cuatro Espacios (2018). [Screenshot] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEYgpOPLg&t=133s

Figure 11. Lineros, C (2018) Fique Workshop. [Photograph]

Figure 12. Chris Bell / The Culture Trip (2022) Quebrada Las Gachas in Guadalupe. [Photography] Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/colombia/articles/the-top-10-things-to-see-and-do-in-santander-colombia/