WHY DO WE DESIGN EVERYTHING AS CARS?

One has a lot of time to reflect on many things when driving distances, and there are many such separations in Australia where a regular two-hour drive is commonplace. The most basic subject to ponder during these periods of mobile inactivity is the design of the passing and passed cars. One gets to know mysterious ‘others’ not as drivers in any personal way, but as characters defined by their vehicles, their brands, the colours, details, shapes, and styles as well as the manner in which the vehicles are propelled.

We become familiar with types in each of these categories, able to make statements as assumptions about them: “That’s a strange colour; shape; detail!” “Oh, look at that smarty-pants!” “He's a road hog!” etc., all with added expletives as seem necessary in the urgency of passing observations depending on mood and circumstance.

Each car is assessed in every way, with its styling being the most immediate, the primary surveillance; then it's detailing, and soon after, its handling. Each vehicle has a unique character even though every one might be similar in a strange, exclamatory manner that seeks eyes and comment. The world of driving becomes an assessment of style types and driving techniques. The stylish mannerisms take over in significance, with their quirky, visual immediacy. The world becomes a fluid field of random designs just because it can be – a sea of difference.

To put this in context, one needs to consider boat detailing and car detailing - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-car-and-boat-contrasting-design.html. The rigours and logic of the ship detailing that so inspired Le Corbusier, gives way to the fanciful display of endless possibilities and alternatives that is car design, a strategy that seems to have inspired Hadid. Panels, trims, and lights - every nook and cranny - are all shaped randomly for some unstated preference, just because they can be; seemingly for a slick visual effect. The early visions of flowing aerodynamic forms in vehicle design that responded to perceived functions and performances, mean nothing as panels sink, swell, and sway to suit a diagrammatic vision that cares very little about fabrication or material – just things ad hoc, in much the same manner as spoilers are fitted to vehicles that will never need them for vehicle control. Areas of glass are blacked out as the preferred, glossy panels shroud bodywork in the effort to lighten appearances and make them more slickly smart. Form has nothing to do with function. Bodywork is shaped to whatever just to attain a preferred form with a liked swish or swash gliding through it. Manufacturing becomes the challenge to form the sketch rather than vice versa.

There is nothing logical in this stylish world of florid motion racing along the motorway. One repeatedly sees ‘Hadids’ everywhere, and occasionally, with crashes, ‘Gehrys’ too. We spend so much time driving that this visually-framed mobile world becomes a significant reference for our understanding of design. We become brainwashed with its commonality, the apparent everyday ordinariness of extremes that establishes the example; the expectation for all design.

If we are to overcome this brainwashing, this becoming familiar with the extraordinary, then we need to approach this world with a raw and critical, questioning eye, rather than being seduced by the joys of motion and movement into admiring the random extremes of forms and ideas that have no beginning other than the search for difference and display in a scribble, a little like we see in the Gehry PR.

If we are to regain our feet, our rational stability, rather than being repeatedly swished off them; and if we choose to establish a philosophical stance to manage our design work intelligently, then we need to engage with this fluid entrancement with a harsh, knowing, critical eye that seeks to see and analyse rather than be totally entranced with the passing distractions that create the danger: the expectation that allows all design to operate likewise - free from rigour, with anything alternative and bespoke being praised for being creatively brilliant: primary self-expression. Look at the endless chat about the ‘Cyber Truck.'

As we drive we need to think, to rationalise; to understand what is happening before our eyes and with our minds and perceptions. Cars are persuasively endearing, creating excuses for preferred, slick randomness rather than the ‘ordinary’ design rigour seen in nature. We need the latter for a guide, not the former that, these days, seems to be before our eyes more frequently as nature exists as a passing blurr, an irrelevant background to both the ‘WOW!’ cars and the ‘knock-dead’ buildings.

While driving is enjoyable, it is not this whizz-bang experience of bespoke extremes that needs to reign supreme as our prototype, but that of the still, quiet being in nature, where rigour lies entwined in love and life; where details hold depth and continuity in their necessarily having to be so, rather than being merely ad hoc decorative variations as in car design, just stylish applique. We may be surprised just how inventively ‘extreme’ nature can be in its essentials.

We need both better car designs and better architecture rooted in nature rather than in flimsy fantasies that seek praise and admiration in their difference for differences sake.

We need rigour; we engage with this world with all parts of our being, not just with our eyes. The swanky ‘WOW!’ might amaze, but this will be only for as long as the next one appears, making all before it ‘old fashioned’ – a past to be forgotten. It has become a sad cliché, but good design has a quality that shines through time, perseveres – it lasts because of its integrity and necessity. Flashy flamboyance is just too flighty, in spite of its eye-catching appearances that seek to engage us.

 See also:

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2015/09/zahas-architectural-car-design-strategy.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-fractal-world-of-design.html