4D Design

4D Design Podcast explores how Architecture + Design can control our perceptions, our behaviors, and our health. Are you interested in how Design works but don’t know how where to start? We will explain all of the tricks we learn in architecture school, and how to read and use the visual language of Design. Andrea Keller (AK) has been a licensed architect for more than 20 years and has taught architectural history, theory and design at USC School of Architecture and Otis. She is an expert in Sacred Geometry and is creating new architecture based on the geometry of music. She believes that everyone should be able to use design in order to be healthier, stronger and more successful. Episodes include Architectural Explainers, Case Studies, History, Theory, and Q&As with AK. 4D Design Website: https://www.fourddesign.com/ Star Tile: https://www.star-tile.com/ AK's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/four_d_design/

S2 EP 1: Ornament, Meaning and Modernism 04/08/2025

S2 EP 1: Ornament, Meaning and Modernism EPISODE 25 - ORNAMENT Ornament has always had an important meta function within the human psyche. It has been "outlawed" for the past 100 years. RESOURCE LINKS AK links: Four D Design - Organic Architecture, Geometry of Nature Star Tile - Multidimensional Ceramics Star Tile Studio - Joshua Tree, CA Contact: WHY DO WE USE ORNAMENT? - SIGNIFIER Social signaling - and this changes over time! Example tattoos - British nobility 1900-1920 Historically it was the demarcation of class and status - governments had rules about what colors and types of clothing could be worn, so that people could never be socially mobile- Ornament on clothing has always been important for the military and in battle, people wore family crests / telling others who they were The same went for houses - all ornament had meaning that could be learned (this is western) Heraldry WHY DO WE USE ORNAMENT? - SOCIAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL Belonging is so important that people will go into debt to buy clothing that lets them fit into a social group, or a car, or jewelry etc - people are wildly craving belonging, and ornament is a way to show your tribe. OTHER REASONS: Repetition causes peace - relaxation of the nervous system By creating the ornament, the maker can embody the energy of the thing that might be feared Establish historic continuity - memory, legacy. Spiritual Side of Ornament - Adornment, Defense, Totems, Enhancing Consciousness. META FUNCTION, embodied practice Adorning parts of us that are vulnerable - defensive and actively stating who we are / calling in our guides. HISTORY OF ORNAMENT Industrial Revolution - 1851 - now possible to make cheap ornament / mass production Attempt at standardizing the language - Owen Jones “Grammar of Ornament” - huge interest in revival of styles / what we would now call Cultural Appropriation.. started with Archaeology around 1750, people discovering ruins, Marie Antoinette wearing toile / chinoiserie In victorian era, people started ascribing a moral judgment to the ornament - Augustis Pugin: ornament should be flat if the floor is flat, not 3d etc.. can’t be inappropriate. He was a CATHOLIC in England - super religious, championed gothic revival because it was faith-based John Ruskin - wrote on architecture but also on geology, botany, ornithology etc - polymath Said that the moral condition of a society could be determined by the ornament - ornament was being incorrectly applied- Shows what is leading up to the birth of modernism, nothing happens in a vacuum. What Happened - Loos, Modernism and the 1920s As both Sullivan and Lévi-Strauss indicate, ornament (as well as other factors) becomes a language of social structures, social experience and even social contradictions. It signifies the status and position of the building, which is itself a representation of the importance of its “owners” and users. Here the manipulation of the image, or in architecture the adding of ornamental beauty to a structure, may increase its relative desirability and value. For buildings are models of ourselves and our society, communicating through form and organizational system the character of that society. BUILDINGS REFLECT THE VALUES AND VALUE OF THE OWNER. MODERNISM - WHAT HAPPENED? Adolf Loos Ornament and Crime The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects", Loos proclaimed, thus linking the optimistic sense of the linear and upward progress of cultures with the contemporary vogue for applying to cultural contexts. "The child is amoral. To us the Papuan is also amoral. The Papuan slaughters his enemies and devours them. He is no criminal. If, however, the modern man slaughters and devours somebody, he is a criminal or a degenerate. The Papuan tattoos his skin, his boat, his oar, in short, everything that is within his reach. He is no criminal. The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate. There are prisons where eighty percent of the inmates bear tattoos. Those who are tattooed but are not imprisoned are latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. if a tattooed person dies at liberty, it is only that he died a few years before he committed a murder." Where do we go from here - how do we start? (HUMANS ALWAYS START OVER WITH FORMS FROM NATURE) Architectural adornment or ornament, like cooking—that most basic transformation of nature—is a way of being in and representing the world simultaneously, a world that in Sullivan’s words “procreates man’s own personality, that fits him, that he might feel at home with himself,” a world of natural objects transformed by the hand of man. This is why Sullivan defined the architect’s task in a manner that reveals his belief in man’s transforming power: the architect as the agent who brings nature into community. James Trilling - The Language of Ornament Harvard-trained art historian, former Textile Museum associate curator, and independent scholar James Trilling expands here on many of the highly original themes that appeared in his The Language of Ornament (2001). He offers intriguing new views of the modernist movement in art and architecture, its puritanical hostility to ornament, and its manifold relationships to the history of technology, science, and industry in the phenomenon known as modernization. Trilling is a passionate advocate of ornament, and he makes a fervent plea for its revival, largely on the grounds that it gives pleasure and "makes people happy" (p. 227). Ranging widely across cultures, time periods, disciplines, and topics, Ornament: A Modern Perspective is a densely layered book of formidable learning, imagination, and complexity. The argument is deceptively simple and difficult to summarize; as Trilling writes of Comte (p. 177), "it is rarely possible to give the bare bones of a utopian vision without making it sound naive." Ornament for Trilling is a specific, intricate concept. He spends part 1 of his two-part book explicating this concept, by which he means the use of motifs and patterns by skilled artists/craftsmen, "the art we add to art" (p. xiii), in the creation of one-of-a-kind objects laden with cultural meaning and symbol, esteemed as art by collectors, connoisseurs, and knowledgeable art historians. In part 2 Trilling traces the links between modernism and the rejection of ornament. Though the focus is on the period since the pivotal Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, his book includes an impressive intellectual history [End Page 418] of the many ways in which ornament was repudiated as idolatry and artifice in numerous societies long before modernism. But after the triumph of mechanization and the ascendancy of efficiency, materialism, and positivism, the leading theorists of modernism thoroughly devalued and assaulted ornament. The most famous instance was Viennese architect and critic Adolf Loos's 1908 essay that seemingly equated ornament with crime. Modernism's visionaries instead exalted functionalism and simplicity in architecture and design. They saw ornament as wasteful, inefficient, and, after the Industrial Revolution, as the product of dehumanized, debased workers far removed from the ideal of the skilled artisan/craftsman of the prefactory era. Modernism's subsequent long reign among intellectual and cultural elites (despite the thin, pale revolt of the postmodern movement), Trilling argues, has now all but blinded us to ornament, erased it from our collective memory and from art. Early modernist theorists sought to jettison the wealth of inherited patterns and motifs rather than welcoming their incorporation and reworking, as traditional crafts had done. (Ironically, one of Trilling's most original arguments is that modernism in fact had its own ornamental style, employing materials that had pattern and texture and creating art rooted in indeterminacy, "labile, ambiguous, unpredictable" [p. 217].) Trilling's mission is to restore understanding and appreciation of the rich, lost world of artisanal ornament. His book addresses artists, architects, designers, their clients and collectors, art historians—tastemakers and all who care about taste. /episode/index/show/83b09f7e-56f9-4886-91b7-543fc9bf5d3e/id/36048155

Ep 24: How to Buy Paint 09/28/2024

Ep 23: All About Paint 08/20/2024

Ep 22: Understanding Color Part 1 - Pro Tips for Choosing Colors 07/16/2024

Ep 21: Why Do We Design Differently for Guests in our Home?! The Good and The Bad - 07/01/2024

Ep 20: Feng Shui 06/28/2024

Ep 19: Minimalism 05/31/2024

Ep 19: Minimalism Today's episode is an introduction to minimalism and the concept of styles being influenced by everything that came before it - that design can be a reaction to the previous generation, and minimalism can be seen as a response to excess consumption or decoration. We'll look at the origins of Minimalism, its current place in popular culture, and see it through different lenses. Below are a few links / additional resources. Influences from Japanese tradition[] See also: The idea of simplicity appears in many cultures, especially the Japanese traditional culture of philosophy. Japanese manipulate the Zen culture into aesthetic and design elements for their buildings. This idea of architecture has influenced Western society, especially in America since the mid 18th century. Moreover, it inspired the minimalist architecture in the 19th century. Zen concepts of simplicity transmit the ideas of freedom and essence of living. Simplicity is not only aesthetic value, it has a moral perception that looks into the nature of truth and reveals the inner qualities and essence of materials and objects. For example, the in temple demonstrates the concepts of simplicity and the essentiality from the considered setting of a few stones and a huge empty space. Proposed as a tool for Freedom: New Yorker article - link below IS IT A PHASE THAT WE ALL SHOULD PASS THROUGH? True minimalism, Chayka insists, is “not about consuming the right things or throwing out the wrong; it’s about challenging your deepest beliefs in an attempt to engage with things as they are, to not shy away from reality or its lack of answers.” I suspect that some recent converts to minimalism have already come to this conclusion. Underneath the vision of “less” as an optimized life style lies the path to something stranger and more profound: a mode of living that strips away protective barriers and heightens the miracle of human presence, and the urgency, today, of what that miracle entails. /episode/index/show/83b09f7e-56f9-4886-91b7-543fc9bf5d3e/id/31555307

Ep 18: Sacred Geometry 101 -The Number 8 and the Octagon 05/19/2024

Ep 17: Sacred Geometry 101 - The Number 6 + Hexagons 05/04/2024

Ep 16: Sacred Geometry 101 - The Number 4 04/05/2024

Ep 15: Why do Architects Talk Funny? 03/26/2024

Ep 14: Using Design to Regulate Your Nervous System 03/12/2024

Ep 13: Design Thinking, Part 2 - Debunking All The Myths 03/07/2024

Ep 12: Design Thinking, Part I - 3 Tips for more Powerful Design Work 02/28/2024

Ep 11: Cognitive Biases are Bad for Design - How to Identify and Get Rid of Them 02/20/2024

Ep 10: Designing for Your Core Values 02/15/2024

Ep 9: How to Draw like a Designer 02/06/2024

Ep 8: Repetition in Design - It's a Party 01/31/2024

Ep 7: Symmetry is the Boss of You 01/22/2024

Ep 6: More Fibonaccis - The Number 13 01/16/2024

Ep 5: Fibonacci Series + Sacred Geometry of the Number 5 01/09/2024

Ep 4: What is "Style" in Design? 01/02/2024

Ep 3: Why Architecture and Music are the Same 12/26/2023

Ep 2: Design as a Manifestation Tool (and 5 Tips for Starting your Design Journey!) 12/11/2023

Ep 2: Design as a Manifestation Tool (and 5 Tips for Starting your Design Journey!) Design as a Manifestation Tool This episode was inspired by the hundreds of people who have said to me that one day they will build their dream home. One day? Why not start now with even a tiny little piece of it? If we can start with creating even one wall of that home now, we can accelerate our journey by embodying that future in our physical environment - which will greatly change how we feel and act. Design literally IS a physical manifestation of an idea. Why not use a physical manifestation of our beliefs to move us closer towards our future self? I encourage people to start their design journey as early as possible, because when they are finally ready to build their dream home, the process won't be new - they will already be experts in design. Design is a wildly powerful tool that is used ON us every day. What if we use design FOR ourselves? 5 TIPS FOR STARTING YOUR DESIGN JOURNEY: Start Very Small - the tinest of projects are the perfect place to start. Make it Personal - office, bedroom, the most personal space you have - NOT THE LIVING ROOM! Borrow and Steal! Pablo Picasso is widely quoted as having said that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Expect the design to change over time - this will be a process and allow it to flow as you gain confidence in your aesthetic! Move things, change the color, embrace the process - PERFECTION IS NOT A THING. When you want to test this on a public-facing design, create your Zoom background. Log on to a session, tape out the frame that is caused and create a background design only in this area. What do you want to embody? Beauty, traditional decor, strength, spirituality? Search for this decor and borrow it. You can play with the scale on your computer, tape the correct size on the wall, then make sure the items you are ordering are the correct scale. Want to send in questions? DM me at @four_d_design on IG or email /episode/index/show/83b09f7e-56f9-4886-91b7-543fc9bf5d3e/id/29004038

Ep 1: Why Design Matters 11/22/2023

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