IN automobiles the visual is not as important as the engineering.
Very much like healthy quality food and good quality friends.
mando
On Mar 20, 2009, at 7:56 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
What was so wrong with the "Good Design" exhibitions that the M.O.M.A.
discontinued in 1955? Was it just that they were a "Modernist
aesthetic
rampage against ornament and historicist styles" (as Peter Hall
eloquently put
it).
Or is there something wrong-headed about any attempt to consider
the aesthetic
quality of a design, exclusive of any other considerations ?
(like sustainability, accessibility, functionality, ergonomics,
affordability
etc)
As Peter Hall would explain it, a fork is an argument against
touching food
with your fingers -- but is it possible to ignore that argument,
and just
consider whether one fork looks better than another ?
I think so.
Just as I think the aesthetics of a F.L.W. prairie style house can be
considered without concern for whether his roofs are always
leaking and his
doorways are often too short.
And the same with automobiles.
To choose a visual design that is "more suited to the fashion
industry than to
industrial manufacturing." is one decision. To "allow much wider
specs for
parts and materials" is another, and the one does not require the
other.
So, I would have no problem with M.O.M.A. reinstating its annual
exhibitions
of "Good Design" -- except, that first it needs to apply their
standards of
good visual design, whatever they might be, to the art works in
their own
collection.
(and no, I don't want aesthetic decisions to be made by engineers -
and I
don't think that airplanes are anything more than fascinating
eyesores)
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