We are pleased to announce a new series of seminar hours bringing together researchers from the Centre for Design History (CDH) at the University of Brighton and Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at University of Sao Paulo (FAU-USP).
Each session takes place on MS Teams. Each researcher will speak about their research for 15 mins, and then the remainder of the session will comprise Q&A and whole group discussion. All welcome!
Research Pairing 1: Homes and Interiors
Wednesday 14 July 2021, 2-3pm (UK) / 10-11am (Brazil)
Gustavo Curcio (FAU-USP) and Megha Rajguru (CDH)
Gustavo Curcio
Editorial design for popular magazines in Brazil: visual aspects of reader’s homes
 
This talk will present the graphic design changes of AnaMaria magazine, a publication targeted to women, between 2006 and 2009, a period of growth for Brazilian middle class. As a result of some changes in the profile of its readers, the demand, and the expansion of the publishing market, there was a significant change in the visual language of this publication and similar editorial projects. Inspired on visual aspects collected from reader’s homes, the research analyses the graphic editorial project transformation. The evolution of such language, references and reasons for the new editorial proposal, which so far continues without significant changes until now will be discussed.

Megha Rajguru
Learning from the past, learning across cultures: negotiating policy and making homes

This short talk will introduce approaches to studying interiors shaped by communities at the behest of policy frameworks led by real estate. By drawing on historical research and introducing current collaboration with Professor Rupali Gupte, School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai, this paper will begin to explore how community practices of creating own spaces offer novel ways of understanding the boundaries of the interior and ways of living that are radical and flexible. These insights are crucial for reimagining design and policy.

Research Pairing 2: Design Archives and Collections
Wednesday 21 July 2021, 2-3pm (UK) / 10-11am (Brazil)
Clice Mazzilli (FAU-USP) and Sue Breakell (CDH)
Clice Mazzilli

Editorial design collection of the Graphic Programming Laboratory (LPG): memory, production and graphic language

The Graphic Programming Laboratory at FAU-USP has been producing institutional materials, academic journals, teaching publications and independent student productions for more than 50 years. Recently, this editorial archive has been treated as one of the Faculty’s collections, which reflects its own history, as well as the teaching of design practiced in the school over these decades. This short talk will address the graphic language transformations occurred in the editorial production of the LPG FAU-USP in the period 1960-2010, considering the available technologies and the different design solutions arising. This is an ongoing research, so partial results and some methodological procedures will be presented.

Sue Breakell
Memory’s instruments: the method of the archive 
This session will present recent research foregrounding the often under-represented knowledge produced through archival practice, research which bridges critical archive studies and art and design history. I refer in this work not only to the ‘professional’ activities of the archivist, but to other forms of archival practices: practices of designers which may be read as inherently archival in and through the archive; and archival practices manifesting in the active production and collation of new archives.
University of Brighton staff and students can join using the code: cva6beg