The impact of a new building on its surroundings is crucially dependent upon design. In his paper, The Value of our Inheritance, David Cooper explores the disciplines of Art and Design.
This paper focuses on the cultural life of Farnham and tries to get ‘behind the scenes’ in order to confront the difficulties of judging what is ‘Good Design’. This is something we all find difficult to do. David Cooper, a lecturer in Fine Art at the former Farnham School of Art, explores some of the design principles that Farnham once employed in order to make improvements to the town. His approach looks at the part Drawing should play in its role as a fundamental tool which can give all of us a means of understanding some of the hidden issues which lie beneath the natural and built environment. (See Dr Alice Roberts’ comments, as a scientist, on P5 of the paper.)
David adds:
Readers may not be aware of the cataclysmic rejection of centuries of traditional Fine Art practice that has now taken place in Degree-awarding Colleges of Art and Design all over the country. This has been accompanied by the removal of any historical references to the origins of Fine Art in the Renaissance or to the traditions it had formed which have made such enduring marks on our cultural lives. (The OED defines the word ‘Fine’ as appealing to a sense of beauty, esp. painting, sculpture, architecture; of high quality, perfectly completed and of striking merit’.)
