Article by Kristin Hohenadel, magazine editor specialising in design, has summed up minimalism and minimalistic design and the difference they have.

(https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-minimalist-design-4796583#:~:text=Minimalist%20design%20is%20about%20prioritizing,a%20pure%20form%20of%20elegance.)

John Pawson is English interior designer who is obtaining of using any unnecessary decor, colour or clutter in his designed spaces. From ANY 1994 article his style is described as voluntary poverty and is said that wabi (indicating poverty) — to be thingness is to possess the world. Voluntary giving up things, one can discover freedom in absence of things. I thought it’s interesting because can see his idea of what minimalism is and what it can do or represent.

The same article later on went to talk about how he chooses to subtract the designer objects and the designers signature, saying how it doesn’t matter what reproduced object he choses; what matters is the fact that the object combination  and relation to other materials he choses is unreproducible. 

Then in AD article from 2017 his commercial and residential designs, every single image had caption naming the art and furniture designers, which some of the names were very famous and expensive. This contradicts his previous indicated poverty approach he had in beginning of his career. 

(https://www.jstor.org/stable/41845661?searchText=minimalism+interior&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dminimalism%2Binterior%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19%26groupefq%3DWyJyZXZpZXciLCJjb250cmlidXRlZF90ZXh0Iiwic2VhcmNoX2NoYXB0ZXIiLCJtcF9yZXNlYXJjaF9yZXBvcnRfcGFydCIsInJlc2VhcmNoX3JlcG9ydCIsInNlYXJjaF9hcnRpY2xlIl0%253D%26pagemark%3DeyJwYWdlIjoyLCJzdGFydHMiOnsiSlNUT1JCYXNpYyI6MjV9fQ%253D%253D&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Ab4808cef3d62ba789d41d685ef69cdea#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/john-pawson-rooms)

Axel Vervoordt

Belgian interior designer uses the 4 elements and existing environments in order to create his designs. (Tbc)

Minimalism is stripping down of all unnecessary decor. is it minimalism in old buildings  if their architectural details are kept but furnishings are simple?

Difficult to find articles from interior designers or architects that criticise minimalism, they mostly say it’s about cherishing the object and/or history. Non design people only look at it from surface - looks cold and impersonal. they are the ones criticising it. Is there a middle ground that non-designers can appreciate minimalistic interiors and understand them deeper than just from what they see on surface?

If not minimalism then what else term I should use? What are synonyms to use?

Should I compare art, architecture, interior design or just interior design?

Historically minimal interior design is from western world (de Stijl, van de rose etc) but modern 21st century is inspired by wabi sabi (Japanese) — should I expand on that? 

How to find articles about wealth and minimalistic interior design?

How to use other links (proquest, AJ (can’t access via uni), ebscohost) other than jstore? how to open this? https://www.proquest.com/docview/1473800859/D892C63B81A94765PQ/5?accountid=26453

If minimalism and wabi-sabi are PR terms then why are they that, to who are they marketed towards? Like my topic idea of exploring if it’s only for wealthy or is it also for regular people too, is it even genuine or just a capitalist money making trend?

NEW dissertation idea:

Difference between wabi-sabi and western minimalism (japandi or something else) - need to narrow it down. Can I narrow down to designer or shouldn’t as I am critiquing the work as well?

//Maybe ideas?

Difficult to find articles from interior designers or architects that criticise minimalism, they mostly say it’s about cherishing the object and/or history. Non design people only look at it from surface - looks cold and impersonal. They are the ones criticising it. Is there a middle ground that non-designers can appreciate minimalistic interiors and understand them deeper than just from what they see on surface?

Japanese architect Tadao Ando once noted, “If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness.”

https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/collections/minimalist-interiors/

(Upon reading couple paragraphs, yes, this is difficult to unpack and even understand at times. Art is not really something I`d like to focus on but maybe it can help understand minimalism more and/or on a different perspective. Also this article can maybe give terms other than “minimalism” because you said it’s too marketed these days and has lost its artistic “flare, positioning, meaning” perhaps?)

Minimal Art, or otherwise known as literalist art, conceives of itself as neither one nor the other (painting and sculpture); on the contrary, it is motivated by specific reservations, or worse, about both; and it aspires, perhaps not exactly, or not immediately, to displace them, but in any case to establish itself as an independent art on a footing with either.

Donald Judd said about minimalism art that there should be a definite whole and maybe no parts, or very few. As definite whole he meant canvas which is a rectangle, and definite few parts as the shapes that are painted upon canvas. He said that painting should be nearly an entity, one thing, and not indefinable sum of a group of entities and references. It also establishes the rectangle as a definite form; it is no longer a fairly neutral limit. A form can be used only in so many ways. The rectangular plane is given a life span. The simplicity required to emphasize the rectangle limits the arrangements possible within it. He said that rectangular shape of canvas restricts the art and it should be explored more dimensionally, outside of 2 dimensional canvas. That, moreover, automatically “gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors—which is riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art. The several limits of painting are no longer present. A work can be as powerful as it can be thought to be. Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.”

Interestingly he and artist/sculptor Robert Morris are opposed of sculpture if it, similarly to a painting, is “made part by part, by addition, composed” and in which “specific elements . . . separate from the whole, thus setting up relationships within the work.” Judd mentions anthropomorphism - making something which is not human, more human like (https://www.accessart.org.uk/anthropomorphic-animal-paintings/#:~:text=Anthropomorphism%20is%20making%20something%20which,in%20the%20art%20they%20made.) But in this context it`s about creating sculpture with its surroudnings “A beam thrusts; a piece of iron follows a gesture; together they form a naturalistic and anthropomorphic image. The space corresponds.” Judd said that “the big problem is that anything that is not absolutely plain begins to have parts in some way. The thing is to be able to work and do different things and yet not break up the wholeness that a piece has. To me the piece with the brass and the five verticals is above all that shape.” For them the shape is the object. 

Furniture design

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