Websites

5 websites useful for keeping us informed about interior design/architecture:

www.interiordesign.net

www.dezeen.com

www.designweek.co.uk

http://news.architecture.sk.

www.cfsd.org.uk

5 websites good for keeping up to date with news and current affairs:

www.sciencemag.org

http://news.bbc.co.uk

http://news.sky.com/skynews

www.nature.com

www.sustainability.com

Sentimentality

Sentimental (adj)

1. expressive of or appealing to sentiment, esp. the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia: a sentimental song.


2. pertaining to or dependent on sentiment: We kept the old photograph for purely sentimental reasons.


3. weakly emotional; mawkishly susceptible or tender: the sentimental Victorians.


4. characterized by or showing sentiment or refined feeling.

The thought of sentimentality is often a negative one...something sentimental is often something which brings back memories, starts a person reminiscing. Something passed down by a family member before they died, something given to someone by a boyfriend/girlfriend. Why is it seen as negative to remember? And does something sentimental always bring back these memories when you look at it?

Something sentimental is usually something obvious - a peice of jewellery which is always worn, a photo in a purse or wallet, a teddy which is slept with every night. It is something which everyone close to you knows about. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it is something private, personal which not many people know about. After speaking to people about their sentimental possessions for our project, I realised that some of the objects which were sentimental to the people close to me I didn't know about. Maybe what makes some things sentimental is the fact that only the person which it has meaning to knows about it.

Negativity and sentimentality are often linked. Something sentimental can often be given to you by someone no longer in your life, a family member or a friend. This type of object brings up memories. But these memories are not always negative. Some things may also bring up happy memories, and no sad ones. However, these memories may not always be brought up. A sentimental object which is seen every day might not immediately make you start thinking, it may be that the memories are only brought up if you start thinking about them. So is something sentimental really linked to negativity?

Annotated Bibliography

Andrews, D.A. & Bonta, J.
(2003)
The Psychology of Criminal Conduct (Third Edition)
Cincinnati, Anderson Publishing Co.
Discusses reasons for crime being situational as well as personal, which relates to the point made in "The Tipping Point" about personality changing in different situations, and the influence of the people around us.

Ball, R.A. Cullen, F.T. & Lilly, R.J.
(2007)
Criminological Theory - Context and Consequences (4th Edition)
London, Sage Publications Ltd.
Looks at the links between opportunity and delinquency, and how a lot of the people involved in crime have little opportunities in life (e.g. education, jobs). It also, again, examines the "Broken Windows" theory and the tolerance of crime and delinquency in certain areas, which then leads to the problem getting bigger.


Breen, W.E. Elhai, J.D. & Kashdan, T.B.
(2008)
Social Anxiety and Disinhibition: An analysis of Curiosity and Social Rank Appraisals, Approach - Avoidance Conflicts, and Disruptive Risk-Taking Behaviour
Journal of Anxiety Disorders, vol 22, no.6, pp925-939, Aug 2008
Looks into curiosity and how people will show "disinhibited behaviours" to acheive a higher social status, and how curiosity is linked to social anxiety in different groups of people.


Carrabine, E. Iganski, P. Lee, M. Plummer, K. & South, N.
(2004)
Criminology - A Sociological Introduction
Oxon, Routledge
Looks at various different aspects of crime, including how crime is more frequent in disadvantaged areas, and patterns in different types of crime, e.g. property crime, which has risen and decreased rapidly since the late 18th century.


Doran, BJ
(2005)
Investigating the Spatiotemporal Links between Disorder, Crime, and the Fear of Crime
Professional Geographer 57 (1): 1-12 Feb 2005
Looks at how crime and disorder vary over periods of time and space, and how graffiti is one of the most widespread types of crime. It also looks at the "Broken Windows" theory which is discussed in "The Tipping Point".

Funder, D.C.
(2006)
Towards a Resolution of the Personality Triad: Persons, situations and behaviours
Journal of Research in Personality 40 (1): 21-34 Feb 2006
Looks at the connection between personality and situation, and the variation in behaviour of people in different situations and how a small change in the situation can have a large affect.


Laub, J.H. & Sampson, R.J.
(1992)
Crime and Deviance in the Life Course
Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 18 pp 63-84
Discusses the links between age and crime and how crimes decline and grow throughout peoples' life course.

Pearlin, L.I.
(1989)
The Sociological Study of Stress
Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, Vol 30, No3, pp241-256
Examines stress research and how research could be changed. It also looks at the social and institutional statuses of people in relation to stress (i.e. jobs with a lot of responsobility, high social status in a neighborhood, etc)


Tryon, G.S. & Vinski, E.J.
(2009)
Study of a Cognitive Dissonance Intervention to Address High School Students' Cheating Attitudes and Behaviours
Ethics and Behaviour, vol 19, no3, pp218-226, May 2009
Discusses a experiment used to try and decrease the number of students cheating, and how the experiment did not show what was expected.

Power of Context and IED

So how does the Power of Context relate to IED? This mind map gives some examples.
This task really added to my understanding of the chapter, and it makes you think about how the two subjects are interlinked. The way different situations affect personality is important, as this is true in different projects, groups and spaces. Designers need to be adaptable to their projects and clients and adopt different responsobilities for these, just as the guards and prisoners had to do in the prison experiment in this chapter. The understanding of background and social class is also an important area, as designers must have a full understanding of their client, regardless of their class or background. For example the Peckham library in London, which was mentioned in the lecture with Mike Press. The designers of this would have had to study the backgrounds and social groups of the people who the library was for. After doing this they discovered that kids in the area needed somewhere to study, but also eat. So the decision was made to change the usual library rules and allow food and drinks. Change, and breaking the rules, may originally be thought of as a risk - but is it a risk that should be taken? Opportunity is opportunity, whatever the situation, and it is people making the most of opportunity and taking risks that creates the changes in ideas, fashion and trends that are needed.

Group Brainstorm

I found this task very useful. It was good to get talking to other people and see what there opinions were on this chapter. Also it was good to have a few minds putting in comments to the brainstorm, I felt it was a good thing to do before I started my own mind map. It is interesting to see how everyone relates the power of context back to different aspects of IED, and it really gets you thinking about the different ways in which they are linked.

The Tipping Point - Mind Maps

The Tipping Point

I have recently read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, for Design Studies. The book describes how situations - 'epidemics' - happen, how they have a point where they 'tip', going from something not particularly popular to something extremely popular, a trend which everyone follows. Examples given of this are Hush Puppies, how they went from being a shoe noone wore, an 'uncool' shoe, to a shoe that designers were using, haute couture. And all this because of a few kids, who wanted to be cool and wore hush puppies simply because noone else did, because it made them individual, unique. Another example is suicide rates. How can one person commiting suicide start a craze? Its very strange but true, the rates of suicides go up in an area after one person in that area commits suicide. If someone famous commits suicide, the rates also go up. If someone young commits suicide, the number of young people in fatal road traffic accidents increases steadily for a few days before dropping, and the same goes for older people. This is the Tipping Point.

I chose to focus on the chapter 'The Power of Context'. I found this chapter very interesting as it goes into peoples' personalities, how they change. The way peoples' personalities change depending on where they are, who they are with, what situation they are in. A normally quiet person can change into a dictator type person, just by being given a small slice of power. This was proved in Stanford University's experiment, led by Philip Zimbardo, of making a 'prison' and putting people as gaurds and people as prisoners. The guards found that power went to their heads, the prisoners broke down, could not cope. The experiment was stopped after 6 days, although it was supposed to run for 2 weeks.

Unfortunatley I can't get to a scanner right now as I am ill, and photos turn out too blurry, so my mind maps will be up soon!