Hell yeah looks are important. If they weren't we'd all have cars with mustang 2 front ends instead of chrome dropped axles and brand new crate motors instead of flatties, caddies, etc.
I guess any component that is totally functional and fills a specific need with no frills could be considered as "Pretty" if only for its simplicity of design . As stated above ...that's where personal taste enters into the equation. A straight axle to some is considered to be the ultimate in beauty on a traditional hot rod but to others the drilling of holes(for a street car where weight is not so much a consideration) adds the finishing touch even though the only purpose is to enhance the appearance. It serves the same function but definitely changes the overall theme of the car.
Let me start this by saying I don't have enough engineering to say one way or the other , So I'm just repeating what I've read several places. The holes actually make it stronger because it actually increases the surface area. Thats the gist of the idea anyway
One school of thought says that if it's designed perfectly for function, it will be beautiful as a result. Looking at old racing cars and hotrods kind of bears this out, and motorcycles flat confirm it.
I suppose I can be serious at least once on this thread. Are looks important? To a certain point, at least where I'm concerned. If I'm going to put my hands on something whether it be mechanical, paint, fab whatever, I'm not going to half-ass it. I was always taught that if you're going to do something do it once and do it right. I'm not going to do something like brake work and not clean & paint the drums, backing plates and all hardware or replace lines and just coil up the extra. It's all going to be done right and if right is pretty then so be it. When I use to do body & paintwork, guys use to tell me all the time that I don't have to spend as much time on a white or silver car as I would a black or dark blue car. I would simply tell them that "I would know".
Incorrect. "Form follows function" does not mean that function is the exclusive consideration. It means that function is the first consideration...then form follows. The limitations of the form are dictated by the function aspect.
What? Let me say that is total B.S. The holes definately do not make it "stronger". If that were true every bridge you ever saw that was made from i-beams would have holes cut into it. The facts are, based on the actual loading of a given i-beam, the web doesn't neccesarily have to be continuous. That's why cutting holes in the web can be a good way of removing weight without a significant reduction in strength. The one thing we can agree on however is a drilled I-Beam looks awesome.
You can get bogged down in the interpretation of the statement but bottom line is that function will dictate the basic form to a great extent and anything beyond that point will be to enhance the form for aesthetics .
Louis Sullivan is accepted as the originator of the term. Many people state it, incorrectly believing that it means "looks don't matter" or that design elements beyond pure usability are unnecessary. They should take a closer look at Sullivan's designs. He included artistic elements that were not strictly functional, beyond enhancing the aesthetic qualities of the buildings. In effect, good aesthetics ARE functional, not unlike ergonomics. Ugly cars, like ugly buildings are not generally beloved.
Drilling holes in metal does not make it stronger. You can remove metal (weight) by drilling holes without sacrificing much strength, but it won't make the component any stronger.
What about belled holes ? Those together really stiffen up a panel and you can't have one without the other. Looks very cool ! In some situations a hollow tube is stronger than solid . Completely different but a bar joist ( mostly open area) is pound for pound much stronger than a solid beam . Two men can easily carry a 30 ft bar joist, it will span 30 feet and hold its designated load too. Many times its own weight. A solid beam that will just span 30' with no load is freaking huge and not something that can be moved .
I believe you're thinking of heat transfer like with a cooling fin on an air cooled motor. Guys used to drill the crap out of the fins on motorcycle engines. Not sure it did any good though as the substantial reduction in conductivity in the metal would counter the marginal gain in surface area.
There is a little more to it than that: You're talking about a time when craftsmanship was valued as a rule. The hands that made the part left a little part of the person attached in the things they manufactured. To me that is the real difference, and why a guy like Bass sets the bar so damned high in a world where the soul has been stripped out of so many things - not only mechanical creations, but clothing, food, furniture..... In fact everything we interact with on a daily basis. Getting all philosophical, but there is a deeper thread running through here. It is precisely the lack of the presence of this humanness in modern life that lead many of us to enjoy what we do and find our way to the HAMB...
Point in fact for me. The sprint car group I run around with builds some of the finest sprinters in this area. We are at an auction here this weekend with one of our cars, and the difference in care of assembly is obvious. It's fun to watch the public walk along the row of sprint cars on display when they come to our car. A sign of that is when people who know nothing about automobiles and how they function remark about how pretty that car is, or are drawn to our car for reasons they can't articulate. They know it's special, or beautiful, but they don't know why. Aesthetics has a great deal to do with how a machine is perceived. I honestly believe that the aura of Indianapolis died when the roadsters were retired. They weren't the fastest, they weren't the best handling, but they were the most beautiful.
They sure are to me. Is an alternator on a flathead more efficient? Maybe but it looks like shit. Will an electric fan cool a hotrod engine? maybe but not one of mine. Too F'n ugly. It has to look right or I won't do it. Sorry! I'll drink to that!
This is what seperates hot rodders from customisers. one is about function. one is about looks. When a hotrodder cuts holes in shit, throws bits away he doesnt give a damn about looks, its about function. when a customiser creates a car, who cares how fast it goes, its about how good looking it is.
Indeed. Sullivan's work of around 1900 would strike later eyes as distinctly ornate. Even examples with a distictly "modernist" overall demeanour, like Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. or the Gage building, have a layer of unabashed ornament that was wholly lacking in later modernism. That later interpretation of the dictum should so contradict the work considered to be the product of its principle should give an indication of the theoretical can of worms that is opened when one begins to take "form follows function" to its logical conclusion. Personally I have no problem with what Sullivan clearly meant, just as I have no problem with what I believe Augustus Pugin meant when he said, "decorate construction, never construct decoration," some half a century earlier. I believe they meant very much the same thing, even though Pugin was extolling the merits of the Gothic as against the Classical. Between Pugin and Sullivan there occurred the entire Arts and Crafts movement, which followed Pugin in a renewed appreciation for a Medieval design mind-set. Sullivan very clearly came out of this pro-Medieval, pro-Gothic environment. The idea that ornament was sin was never any part of it: that only came in the '20s with Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, le Corbusier, etc. It would take a very wild stretch of the imagination to associate "ornament is a sin" with Gothic works like Louis IX's Sainte-Chapelle of the 1240s. The profusion of ornament is something that immediately strikes the observer of Gothic architecture. Moreover, one finds a lot of the iconic works of modernism fall afoul of Pugin's principle, in that an "ornamental idiom" is derived from a structural aesthetic. Extra "construction" is added for the sole purpose of achieving a "functional look". I find it inoffensive when done so transparently, brazenly, clumsily, and naïvely as in most pre-streamline Art Deco architecture, but instances like the "expression of structure" on the façades of Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building start to come across like design-crit waffle bullshit. I think that is where billet went wrong: the idea of a "functional look" considered de-rigueur cool in its own right trumped all considerations of real functionality - mainly out of the modernist impulse effectively to blow scale out of proportion by getting rid of the finer detail. The definitive billet rod was really a 1:87 model car blown up to full size, because all the effort to simplify shapes down to the level of detail one would expect on such a small-scale model. That meant not only shaved handles etc. but hidden wiring, hidden fixing on engine parts, etc. while there is a perfect sense in stuff like head bolts having a scale appropriate to wrenches and human hands, and consequently a level of detail complexity. I can imagine a build in which the level of scale is another step smaller, the Meccano scale of a child's hands; a car that comes across as some kind of huge industrial locomotive graciously scaled down to a level where you and I can appreciate its fascinating intricacy. Bugatti Type 35s have some of that. And from that comes another principle I like to follow. I see it in almost every hot rod, but barely in any modern car. That is, to treat the observer with respect by proceeding from the assumption that they are capable of understanding what they are looking at. And that is Pugin all over.
I've enjoyed all the posts on this thread, but this one especially stirred my curiosity. Where do the cars of Voison fit in the form vs. function question? They don't seem to be meant to have an "accessible" beauty, but they have something that quite admirably passes for beauty. Or a grace born of function that acts as a synthesis of beauty.
We just toured some of the palaces in London. They had a lot of beautiful, "ornament." It's what set them apart from the rest of the buildings. We didn't tour any of the factories while we were there, even though they were more functional. My F150 utility truck is also very functional but I doubt anyone would want to give it a second look. I miss beauty. I like the art deco look. I guess either could be taken too far to the extreme, though. It's at either one of the two extremes that it looks, "wrong." Combining the two makes it, "right." Just one man's opinion.
Wow Ned, lots to chew on there. I especially was taken by this - " That is, to treat the observer with respect by proceeding from the assumption that they are capable of understanding what they are looking at." Form ever follows function ? Hummm Function first form second ? Hummm Fully Satisfied function will lead to a pleasing form? Hummm There's an old saying , " If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" I run into women who interpolated that a license to make everyone completely miserable unless their every whim is entertained or satisfied. I ask them this, "doesn't that mean its pretty important to see to it that you are a happy person? Because if you aren't you'll always be surrounded by unhappiness ." That has nothing to do with this other than how folks see the meanings of these types of "sayings" I see it as when all aspects of the indended function are satisfied , the form is going to be there. What ever that category may be. Buildings, cars, clothing, gadgetry, embellishments, accessories even though it was an architect who said it pertaining to buildings of his era.
I thought we were talking about stuff with holes vs stuff without holes and how those holes do or don't make it stronger. Here's the sticky part though, do you want to include or exclude the " pound for pound" factor for strength ?
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