| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 設計學系 === 105 === The Earth has some 40,000 plant species. They differ in structure and morphology, and are adapted to many different types of growing conditions. Human beings instinctively sense beauty in plants, deriving spiritual satisfaction from this sense of beauty and happiness from contact with plants. The flowers and foliage of plants are indispensable elements in all kinds of rituals and celebrations, such as weddings and birthdays; and flowering plants are an ideal medium for expressing sentiments such as love, gratitude, respect, or friendship. This is indicative of humans’ close relationship with plants. In the field of design, the diversity of form and of species among plants provides designers with a rich source of inspiration and imagination.
People continually place new requirements on products, and in today’s era of highly developed science and technology, a product’s basic functions are no longer sufficient to satisfy users’ demands. Beyond designing a product’s functional capabilities, an important aim of design must be to create “meaningful” concepts, causing users to make mental connections with similar memories and emotions, and thereby eliciting a sympathetic response.
Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to explore methods and models for extracting plant images and applying them to the form of products by means of image transformation, in order to provide designers with a reference for such an approach. Through related theories such as botany and plant observation, this study delineates the characteristics of “plant images” and “plant morphology.” It also uses comparative analysis of product designs from the Arts and Crafts movement, the Art Nouveau movement, and more recent work, to identify differences in the application of plant images to product form in these three different periods, and uses literature analysis to identify methods and models for image transformation.
The results of this study are used to establish a transformational design model centered on plant images, taking the plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum as examples. (These plants are known as the “Four Gentlemen” in Chinese traditional art, and represent the four seasons.) This design model comprises: (1) analysis and planning of plant images to be utilized; (2) combinatory analysis of image and form; (3) product definition and analysis of product structure; and (4) execution of design by transformation of form. Because this study takes plant images as the starting point for design, at the beginning of the design process we must first select the plant(s) whose images we wish to apply to the design. We then begin to analyze images of the thematic plants, and using the images so selected, in coordination with the plants’ morphological characteristics, perform a matching analysis. After deciding the type of product we wish to design, by applying the results of the matching analysis based on plant images and plant morphological characteristics, we can then design the product’s form. In order to verify the design model, a set of lamps was designed on the theme of the “Four Gentlemen,” utilizing the extraction of plant images and the combinatory analysis of morphological characteristics to enable the products to effectively elicit connections with images in the minds of consumers.
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