Research approach to post-industrial places : introduction

Abstract

"The project of the National Programme of the Development of Humanities: “Development” 2.b entitled Post-industrial Places as the Subject of Transdisciplinary Studies. From Design to Rootedness stems from the need to develop a transdisciplinary research path in order to radically complement and transform the existing understanding of post-industrial space design with a complex analysis of philosophy and anthropology of a place. The foundation we base on is cultural studies which already, as Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska indicates, constitute a particular trans-discipline within the humanities.1 Cultural studies still remain fröhliche Wissenschaft, to use Clifford Geertz’s term designating anthropology. 2 However, it is important for us to turn the cultural studies discourse into the direction of both philosophy and anthropology of a place as well as further, towards the field of fine arts and creative activities of designers and cultural practitioners. Although such a perspective combines previous studies carried out in many fields, it does transgress them. The transition from the concept of design as a purely artistic and social intervention in post-industrial space to design understood as penetration into a complex cultural interpretation of a place – a region, identity of a place, axiological and metaphysical foundations of a community, cultural experience – is crucial for us. Searching for a place, rootedness and home in post-industrial space design requires combining cultural orders of thought and experience – to create a research path which would be sensitive to time and place, cultural and historical depth. Revealing the potential of post-industrial past also became a call for responsible interference in a place." (fragm.)