The Cybertruck is not brutalist
inverse.com
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"Real Emo" only consists of the dc Emotional Hardcore scene and the late 90's Screamo scene. What is known by "Midwest Emo" is nothing but Alternative Rock with questionable real emo influence. When people try to argue that bands like My Chemical Romance are not real emo, while saying that Sunny Day Real Estate is, I can't help not to cringe because they are just as fake emo as My Chemical Romance (plus the pretentiousness). Real emo sounds ENERGETIC, POWERFUL and somewhat HATEFUL. Fake emo is weak, self pity and a failed attempt to direct energy and emotion into music. Some examples of REAL EMO are Pg 99, Rites of Spring, Cap n Jazz (the only real emo band from the midwest scene) and Loma Prieta. Some examples of FAKE EMO are American Football, My Chemical Romance and Mineral EMO BELONGS TO HARDCORE NOT TO INDIE, POP PUNK, ALT ROCK OR ANY OTHER MAINSTREAM GENRE
(they are working to make genres that their listeners use, not just asserting it top down)
There's a bunch of blog posts about that map linked at the bottom.
The interesting thing about the copypasta is that none of the bands listed as real Emocore I don't think ever willingly identified as that genre. Whereas all of the other bands listed may have on some level agreed that their music is more or less in the "emo" genre. In way, it's saying that you're only real emo if that was not your intent.
As it relates to the Cyber Truck, however, is interesting. I think it's fair to say that the approach to construction of the Cyber Truck is relatively in line with the Brutalist movement: exposed materials in bare form with rigid and simple geometric designs. But the Cyber Truck was not created by any of the original Brutalist Architects, nor was it done in that era. And even though the location may be somewhat right, in that the Bay Area (where Tesla is HQ'd) is full of Brutalist Architecture, if the author of the copypasta had written about this subject instead, the cyber truck would have undoubtedly been mentioned in the ALL CAPS SECTION at the end.
If almost everyone considers it brutalist, well, too bad expert gatekeeper of an ill-defined abstract notion.
Jargon words are defined once, in an academic paper that introduces them, and then everyone else using the word in the jargon sense keeps using that exact definition. If the word becomes useless, they get a new word, since the old word still means—and will be preserved to forever mean—the old thing.
If you think about it, this is the only way that academia can "work" over a span of generations. We need to be able to differentiate statements about phlostigon from statements about calories; statements about the luminiferous aether from statements about electricity; etc. If we just re-used the word "phlostigon" for the concept of calories, we'd both render a lot of previous papers way more confusing than they need to be, and also make productive debate about which of the hypotheses is true basically impossible.
Anthropology (and so art/music/etc. history) is an academic discipline; words like "Brutalist" are jargon terms in that discipline. (They're also non-jargon words used by laymen like journalists, but that pretty much doesn't affect what the academics do at all.)
It all seems very obvious if you map it to your own discipline. E.g. if laymen, when they say "a matrix", mean some VR simulation thing, that doesn't change what it means when a mathematician says "a matrix", right?
He said, he read a book about rock'n'roll and the author tried to define what r'n'r is.
In the end, for the author, r'n'r was created when a specific album was released somewhere in the 60s and stopped with a specific single released in the 70s. So he was arguing that r'n'r was a music created in a period of less than 10 years and everything befor and after this had nothing to do with r'n'r.
As an aside, the self-titled American Football album from 1999 (fake emo, apparently) is one of my favorite records of all time. Highly recommend for anyone that likes layered twinkly guitars in their indie pop.
Cars up to 70's and 80's were really nice and aesthetically pleasing, and I find the Elon Musk's vision to be really nice and refreshing.
It might be that I'm partial to science fiction in general, but I really would like to see this vision developed further.
For example in Europe you can't have a spoiler that could catch a cyclist. And it is prefered that there is room between the hood and motor in case of an impact with a pedestrian.
This is why a lot of cars start to look the same.
This is also why the cybertruck in it's current form will never be allowed in Europe. A door that doesn't dent on impact of a huge hammer gives a nice show but is a big no for a lot of different safety reasons.
To be honest, Cybertruck may be not allowed in Europe for citizens, but I not see any limitations that could prevent allowing Cybertruck for farming in Europe.
But I think Elon is not stupid. Current Tesla's are extremely safe so he knows what he is doing.
That's why I think there is more to the launch of the cybertruck. I think they sold an idea instead of a truck. The production cybertruck might look the same but will not be wat is promised.
No great loss. Europe isn't a big market for pickup trucks. The other Teslas are selling like hotcakes, though. The Cybertruck might create a market for pickup trucks, but in this shape that seems unlikely.
An F-150 is 0.40. So according to this simulation, the Cybertruck is roughly 20% less efficient than the F150. Of course, all of these simulations are a crap-shoot.
And secondly, towing efficiency seems primarily determined by weight / rolling resistance anyway. So I'm not sure how much CFDs really matter. On the other hand, electric batteries are more efficient. On the other-other hand, ICE gets more efficient the more weight you load on it. (Etc. etc. etc.)
We can sit around and compare apples-to-shotguns all day, but whenever the thing comes out, we'll just run tests on it then. No point trying to make hypotheticals, just test it when it comes out.
EDIT: Another point: the cybertruck, as revealed, doesn't have side-mirrors. So now we have to make a guess: will the final product have side mirrors? Is Musk aiming for a camera-based solution? Etc. etc. These sorts of details could change a CFD simulation significantly. Clearly, the design of the truck is in its early stages, and they still have a lot of work to do. We really don't know what the final product will look like at any detail where an accurate CFD-model could be made.
There's good and bad cars from every era. Some vehicles have aged well. Some vehicles still look stupid today. I find middle of the road vehicles that were neither designed to make a statement nor was aesthetic design ignored generally look good regardless of the era they're from (which makes sense considering that a bunch of professionals had to sign off on its mass-market appeal). The stuff that tries to push the limits is what either looks iconic or terrible in hindsight.
With all due respects, isn't this an entirely meaningless saying? Everyone has an interest in aesthetics and visual appeal, and has a subjective opinion on what they find appealing. We are a social species so invariably people infect each other's opinion so we have trends and movements towards/from opinions, but everyone has equal legitimacy in their opinion on this.
As to the CyberTrck it's worth noting that its design seems a restriction of material limitations rather than an intentional pursuit. As with the Delorean before, they started with the conclusion that they would use stainless steel and virtually every design decision was bound by that beginning.
Why is everyone's opinion equal? When building a bridge, is the opinion of a civil engineer equal to that of a cook? No, clearly not - but we only recognize this because the effects of building faulty bridges are obvious and immediately noticeable, whereas the effects of cultural ignorance are far more subtle and wide-reaching.
The fields of art and aesthetics have a long, complex history and have been studied and written upon by thousands of intelligent scholars, designers, artists, philosophers, and religious figures. Unfortunately, the default opinion among society today (which you yourself are echoing) is just a sort of ignorant relativism - everyone's opinion on art (and anything else that isn't 'practical') has the same value and the topic is fundamentally just a popularity contest.
Worse yet, this opinion wasn't arrived at by carefully considering all the approaches to art and choosing subjectivity as the best option, which it may actually be (but that isn't my point.) Instead, it was arrived at by simple ignorance.
It's about having real-world validation. Anyone can have an opinion about art and literature. If your opinion happens to mirror the opinions of English department academics -- just clever enough to be a new twist, but not so brilliant as to go outside of the culture -- you can get a position as a scholar, and keep writing papers within a mutual appreciation society of academics all thinking roughly the same thoughts. Eventually, the whole crew goes down one rabbithole or other.
A group of thousands of self-supporting, mutually reaffirming "intelligent scholars, designers, artists, philosophers, and religious figures" doesn't make that opinion any more right or valid than my own.
On the other hand, if an engineer can make the fastest sailboat, that's external real-world validation that they got something right.
As a subtle point, I'll trust the opinion of filmmakers who receive public acclaim (external validation). I'll trust the opinion of filmmakers of niche artistic films a lot less. That is to say, I'll trust them about the technical aspects (what aperture means, or how to edit a video), but not about the artistic aspects: how you use film as a medium for communication, expression, and so on. A big part of communication and art is understanding the audience, and they haven't demonstrated they can do that, at least outside of their own clique.
The idea that artistic value is only based on modern academics is really quite myopic.
It seems to me that the challenge for the "objective" theory of aesthetics is pretty much the same as the one for moral realism. Yes, the fact that people disagree about artistic value doesn't mean that artistic value is subjective - but I'm yet to be convinced that it's objective in any meaningful sense. In the end, though, you're right about disagreement over political systems (despite some attempts to do away with political relativism, e.g. Badiou) - but only because different people have different, mutually exclusive, visions of what society is and should be, and the methods to get there. The arguments you're talking about in politics only have any meaning once at least one set goal is agreed upon - e.g. human freedom. But I struggle to think of any such goal that the Bach scholar and the Harry Potter fan are going to agree on.
I think there's a reason why even die-hard Adorno "fans" have given up trying to argue why jazz music is so bad.
When someone can think up an argument to convince a Harry Potter fan that they should really judge Bach's music as more beautiful, pleasing, of higher artistic value etc. than Harry Potter, then I'm curious.
My criticism of the “ignorant relativist” is that he is uninformed on the reasoning of his position and of other positions, not that he thinks art is subjective.
Yes, I arrived at my position out of ignorance, but I've had this kind of argument online before, and nobody has been able to offer me an argument for the side which says we can arrive at value judgments about art that are independent of the person, or whatever the opposite opinion to "art is subjective" is supposed to be.
Do you think these two judgements have equal value?
Such matters are not decided by arguments, the same way flat earth society members are not won by arguments (they heard them all anyway).
It's up to each person to make the effort to grow their understanding, which requires study and self-development.
>I think there's a reason why even die-hard Adorno "fans" have given up trying to argue why jazz music is so bad.
Yes, because mediocre commercial art prevailed in the end, and the kind of cultural development of bourgeois society declined.
Ironically for a good while jazz took a different route from the earlier kind of jazz Adorno criticised, much closer to those ideals of art. So it's more like Jazz post-50s went closer to Adorno than the other way around...
That's true, but it's falling into the same problem I was trying to tease out of GP, which is whether an argument can be produced that study and self-development will lead to one appreciating Bach over Harry Potter. We say that spherical earth theories are superior to flat earth ones not because individuals applied study and self-development to their opinions, but because the spherical earth theory is objectively true, it conforms to the generally agreed upon epistemology. The same can't be said about art (as far as I can tell).
Is Bach "better" than Harry Potter because an individual who studies and self-develops will judge it to be so, or do those who study and self-develop judge it to be so because it's objectively better?
Even then, let's take the individuals out of the equation. To a person unacquainted with both Harry Potter and Bach, on what grounds does an aesthetician say that we should assign higher value to Bach?
An historical/statistical argument can surely be made.
You seldom see people who have studied aesthetics, music, literature, etc, preferring Harry Potter over Bach.
You'll see many more who seldom read or only read genre books or only listened to anything than the charts their whole life enjoy Harry Potter over Bach.
>To a person unacquainted with both Harry Potter and Bach, on what grounds does an aesthetician say that we should assign higher value to Bach?
On points related to one being immersed in culture to recognise. E.g. having read enough literature to understand the derivative and trite nature of Harry Potter, and having heard enough music and knowing its history to know about the innovation and coherence of Bach. Asking professional musicans/composers etc to describe the merits of Bach's music wouldn't be bad either.
There's also an element of "if you have to ask, you will never know".
But all this rounds to the same initial question "what is the objective measurement that makes Bach better".
But there is no objective measurement or axiomatic argument.
The scale in aesthetics is one of development and cross-correlation of techniques, ideas and experiences, and one can only understand these is they have the knowledge and have made the connections. Not just for Bach, but for anything in arts.
The same way a 13-year old pop music fan doesn't have the same refinement as a 20-year old music fan, who has studied the genres, their history, interplay, who did what, techniques, cultural impact, etc, and even less than a 30 year old music critic.
Harry Potter fans are more of the 13-year old kind.
Of course this is sacrilege to say in the modern world.
There are two pressures at play here, that get commingled in actuality.
(1) No one (in Western culture) likes to admit to ignorance. Ergo, they will always project rejection of an idea of which they are ignorant onto any alternate, available rationale. (E.g. "I don't like Bach because..." rather than "I don't understand music theory enough to appreciate what Bach's doing.")
(2) Academic or isolated artists fundamentally under-recognize the fact that their audience approaches the piece with varying levels of knowledge. Consequently, there is often a communication problem. (E.g. I compose an excellent poem in Navajo, then bemoan the fact that Europeans don't understand my work)
Of these, I think (1) is a frequent but less interesting distraction. (2) is the more fascinating to me.
Because it doesn't argue for subjectivity... but rather self-reflective objectivity. In that "To the person I am, with my training and knowledge, this is what the piece is."
Which is why I find popular arts so fascinating (e.g. auto styling, music, film). They seem to encourage artist-engineers, in that their practitioners are simultaneously trained in the medium, but also willfully optimizing for the environment as-is, not for themselves. And that's a skill I can respect.
I imagine Taylor Swift frequently has an idea and rejects / simplifies it, in light of what would resonate with her fans.
It's very possible for me to understand and appreciate what Bach is doing and still not think that this is sufficient qualification for ascribing more artistic value than Harry Potter. As an amateur programmer, I can appreciate all the work that goes into an operating system, but I don't assign more artistic value or appreciation to it than Bach, even if, by whatever measure, the techniques required to make an OS are more intricate. Similarly, I could never get into Iannis xenakis' works - but I do appreciate the work put into it, and I understand how and why he's done it.
Which doesn't seem that bold of a claim.
It's somewhat like saying "Environmentalists don't like nuclear power because most are not trained nuclear engineers." It is a fact that there are few nuclear engineers (or even adjacent physicists). Yet how often do you hear "Nuclear power scares me because I don't understand it"?
In short: the Harry Potter fan and the Bach scholar don't have a shared idea about the best way to judge art. The environmentalist and the nuclear engineer do have a shared idea of maximizing human/environmental safety. The environmentalist has no reason to listen to the nuclear engineer if the engineer's reason for nuclear power is something like "I like to see the number of reactions go up on the computer screen", because looking at numbers on a screen isn't a shared goal between the two parties.
This is what I was getting at; the statistical argument isn't convincing at all, because it's very common for people (including academics) to value fashions and trends. I'm not saying that Bach is valued because of the orthodoxy of music theorists, I am saying that it being a possibility discounts the inherent authority we give to a music theorist's opinion.
>The scale in aesthetics is one of development and cross-correlation of techniques, ideas and experiences, and one can only understand these is they have the knowledge and have made the connections.
There's still no "objective" reason to value a piece of art with particular technique, ideas expressed, or experiences relayed (or within the artist) over another. The 13 year old doesn't have the refinement, but it's unclear why refinement has anything to do with assigning artistic value - and even then, we can point to a great many techniques and ideas expressed in Harry Potter. That Bach's technique has more development and history behind it has no clear bearing on how I ought to judge the artwork.
The "scale in aesthetics" seems to be just as arbitrary as the claim that we ought to judge artwork by how many wizards are depicted in it. Why should techniques and ideas matter more than the number of wizards, if the wizards bring pleasure but knowledge of the techniques does not?
Harry Potter fans are more the 13-year old kind because 13 year olds don't have the idea that the enjoyment of artwork should depend on techniques, ideas and experiences, or rather, the partcular techniques, ideas and experiences one finds in Bach, despite different ones in Harry Potter. The fact that 13 year olds aren't part of that orthodoxy yet is good - they are expressing their freedom to value things apart from what high society tells them to.
So all arguments devolve into making a case before a non-existent court of higher appeals. Which I enjoy and only point out here because I love any chance to offer the book up as suggestion. 320 pages of dense mind hackery. Enjoy!
P.S. - You may critique me, but the effort may be largely wasted. I really have no idea what I'm talking about.
So the Bach v Potter argument is really arguing about whether a typical Harry Potter fan is more motivated by fashion or intrinsic interest. We know Bach isn't fashionable because the music has survived something like 300 years of musical fashions ebbing and flowing.
On a purely technical ground, the great works are usually interesting examples of a particular ... something ... and often capture the culture in a unique way. Eg, Don Quixote still gets read because it introduced a tonne of literary techniques with style and really hits a note at the peak of the Spanish empire. Shakespeare defined a big portion of the English lexicon. Jane Austin is an exemplary example of concise, relevant and interesting storytelling (she packs a lot into a sentence). Tolkien tied together cultures through their languages while setting the standard for what high fantasy worlds should look like with an unreasonable amount of worldbuilding. The Harry Potter series is certainly well written and a really good example of a certain genre, but it isn't obvious if that is enough to compete with all the other well written books out there. It certainly isn't the first of its kind and it isn't clear it showcases any literary tricks. It is a hard argument to say it captures anything about the culture of the day. It looks like one of a very large number of good books that will struggle to be remembered with the passing of time.
The notion that visual design for a consumer product isn't fundamentally validated by a sufficient demand by a sufficiently large set of consumers, to me, is stupid.
So much of humanities seems to be somewhat arbitrary and fashionable categorization in a (somewhat vain) attempt to be able to academically analyze (or at least publish the equivalent).
So this article seems hilarious to me.
There is a value judgement as to how I weigh those, or which ones I care about, but I can evaluate it in some way. People might argue about the merits of a meritocracy versus a democracy, but broadly speaking, everyone will agree that a progress democracy is better than an exploitative, violent, oppressive dictatorship.
The quality of art, in contrast, is fully in the eye of the beholder.
If you'd like to see how this manifests in practice, it's worth looking at Soviet Russia, the French Revolution, or many democracies which failed in practice, despite what were, on the surface, plausible ideas.
This contrasts with literature, where there is no objective metric, and much of the time, someone says "that's great, now let's go even further" to an idea as good as North Korean style communism.
As a result, those evaluation metrics become as arbitrary as the art itself.
> The fields of art and aesthetics have a long, complex history and have been studied and written upon by thousands of intelligent scholars, designers, artists, philosophers, and religious figures.
So, let me ask you, why should I care?
I care about design e.g. "The Design of Everyday Things": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI
But what is it about aesthetics that is not subjective?
If you're genuinely interested in learning about aesthetics, then you'll have to do a lot of reading. As with pretty much any complex topic, there are no easy one-line answers. I recommend starting with the Wikipedia page, browsing some articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and then finding some books in areas that you find interesting. If you're a software engineer, for example, then I'd recommend Aesthetic Computing.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics
- https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=aestheti...
> You should care because (presumably) you don't want to be an ignorant person (as in, lacking knowledge).
Everybody is ignorant about approximately everything. People may find me ignorant because I don't follow some celebrities, sports etc. We need to choose what we educate ourselves on.
To me, it seems like you are making a social proof argument. Other people care about it, so I should care about it too, because otherwise I may be labeled as ignorant. But at the same time, I doubt that this is the kind of argument you want to make. I assume you have some stronger reasons.
I like the monologue of Feynman about Beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRmbwczTC6E
To me, aesthetics is more or less a curiosity. An aspect of our cognition, that is relevant only because it is a result of evolution, some kind of heuristics for dealing with the world. Would you agree with that kind of characterization?
And no I wouldn’t agree that aesthetics is a curiosity; I think it’s perhaps one of the most important topics there is. Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and countless others would agree.
I'm reading "Wittgenstein’s Aesthetics" from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [0] and ... At least this summary doesn't peak my interest. Granted, I seem to have different opinions to Wittgenstein, but that's not the issue. The issue is that the arguments presented are, dare I say it, not aesthetically pleasing :) .
> Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and countless others would agree.
Again, proof from authority + social proof. I don't care how big their names are, or how many people believe it. So, I will end here.
[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-aesthetics/
Because there are more things people should care about than things that can be proven axiomatically or measurement-wise that they should.
But why people, me included, should care about aesthetics in particular?
We have limited time, we need to choose how to allocate it.
Engineering is objective. It is provable. It yields foundational precepts that, if you annihilated society and it grew again, would recur in the same form. Aesthetics/art has gone through countless cycles -- often completely contradictory states -- and at any one time you can find any number of adherents of virtually any belief.
Looking at the disastrous CyberTruck, though, which subjectively almost everyone hates, and saying "I'm kind of into this stuff, so my opinion means more" is absurd. It is 100% subjective, and it is something that everyone has an equal opinion on.
A design that was the result of the limitations of forming stainless steel and pretending like it is some heightened presentation is farce.
Your hate for it is subjective.
Whether almost everyone shares your opinion is objective.
Have you been to Art Basel or any of the other “important” art events where the “experts” go to opine? The $150k banana taped to the wall? There is an “artwork” in MOMA New York that is literally a giant white wall in which the “artist” shot a BB gun. [1] Much of modern art is a giant MLM scam in which some dealer convinces people that some junkie that dips his penis in paint and touches the tip to a canvas is somehow the next Basquiat. A banana sold at Basel this year for $150k. Then some “performance artist” ate the banana, but then the artist said that it’s ok to replace the banana. What the heck just happened? These are the people who’s opinions on art should be respected? I am a very minor league art collector and sloshing through the liquified excrement of an art show is both hilarious and disheartening: hilarious because people will actually spend $50k on used toilet tissue stapled to a wall if the dealer spins a good enough story, and it’s disheartening because there is some real talent out there that doesn’t have the benefit of professional carnaval barkers or flim-flam men to make them famous.
Art absolutely is a popularity contest and always has been.
You'd be surprised.
>and has a subjective opinion on what they find appealing
That's true, but not all "subjective opinions" are equally informed, based on study, and refined/cultivated systematically.
For most, their "subjective opinion" in aesthetic matters is as random as their favorite food.
While "objective" things are clear cut (measurable, quantifiable, 100% not arguable), "subjective" is a scale from "uninformed random preference" (say, a person who likes "Dali" paintings because he's some some in websites and they look cool) to "scholarly expertise" (say, an art curator, that has studied Japanese woodblock for decades with masters of the art).
>but everyone has equal legitimacy in their opinion on this
In the modern world everyone has an equal right to offer their opinion.
That's not the same as the different opinions being equally legitimate (e.g. equally worthy of attention, equally informed, equally productive, equally subtle, etc).
I don't mean to imply I care about this -- the HN illuminati continually vote AGW denier nonsense to the top -- but it does fascinate me. Is this some sort of mod-bomb that dang drops?
In any case, it's impossible to stop eddy currents from forming. Any car, even if it's as slippery as a LMP1 prototype, will generate lots of turbulent eddies. The question is, how bad will the drag coefficient be.
And that's a question you won't be able to answer with simulations unless you have a few tens to hundreds of millions of CPU-hours lying around.
Literally no product you can buy would meet this definition.
I guess you could make a brutalist city bus?
That is a peculiar way to describe what Brutalism projects. I've always thought that it projected the sinister power of bureaucracy, and that was why government officials fell for it as hard as they did.
(I know you're just quoting the author.)
By the express wording of the quote, it doesn't describe what Brutalism projects but what Brutalism was meant to project.
Brutalist comes from the french "brut" meaning "raw". So a car could perfectly well be brutalist by not hiding its nature under paint and covers.
The unpainted Reventon replica[0] is conceptually closer: it's bolted and welded sheet metal, and that's left obviously visible.
[0] http://www.gadgetsandgizmos.org/man-builds-replica-lamborghi...
I find this definition the opposite of pedantic, paying attention to the spirit of the thing rather than the smaller details. Brutalism is not really a style for personal cars, and certainly the entire Elon Musk saga is non-Brutalist as you can get.
If we remove the requirement about the concrete, then Geoff car would also tick all of the boxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCSNCs7bwCw
Barbican Estate, Southbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall, Centrepoint, The Brunswick
We can argue about the design intent of the way it looks and whether that’s Brutalism. Aesthetics is only one aspect of Brutalism.
Another aspect of Brutalism is to expose innards without guilt - If Cybertruck doesn’t have non-structural decorations, farings, etc and it doesn’t attempt to cover things up, that’s pretty fucking Brutal.
A brutalist truck would be something like a Land Rover Defender, or in the concept car world something like the trucks from Bollinger Motors.
A brutalist truck does not use internal hinges that are hidden from sight; a brutalist truck just has bolted on hinges.
A brutalist truck does not have elaborate LED lighting seamlessly integrated below the hood. A brutalist truck just has lights bolted on somewhere.
And brutalist buildings seem to be more about monolithic concrete than exposed girders.
Just go to Google images and search Brutalist architecture.
Other features of brutalist design:
* By exposing the skeleton, the object shows itself as a platform that can be built upon. However, the Cybertruck's convex hull and covered, armored plating do not lend themselves to confident self-expression, but instead drown out any attempt at customization.
* The purpose of the object is apparent and plain in its construction. The Cybertruck's wheels give away that it is a rolling vehicle of some sort, but otherwise its design does not indicate that it is road-worthy, fast, durable, rideable, etc.
* One of the article's main points: The object should, in its humility, elevate a shared societal viewpoint. Quoting from one of the experts in the article:
> The truck is consumerist, whereas brutalism’s monumentality is civic. The truck’s boldness serves the bravado of an individual, whereas brutalism’s visual power was meant to project the shared dignity of the public realm.
The other quote that is worth repeating:
> [But] we don’t see any bolts or gaskets or other details of joinery. Brutalist architects would never allow this. They wanted the method of making and the assembly of parts to be legible — to be put on display as a way of being vividly honest. This was a core principle, and the sleek machined quality of the Cybertruck is ultimately a disqualifying characteristic.
Buildings that are considered brutalist still have walls and a roof, because you know, a building being covered by a roof and having walls is what creates room and space inside. There'd be no point to building it otherwise. But they don't worry about hiding the ductwork and piping inside because hiding it doesn't add to the functionality of the building.
In the cybertruck, the use of unpainted stainless steel is letting the inherent useful properties of the material shine - that's certainly brutalist. The material being difficult to work with is what created the harsh angles in the silhouette - again, that's brutalist.
Definitely agree, unpainted stainless steel is a brutalist trait.
> Zammit realized then that the truck’s DeLorean-mated-with-a-Pontiac-Aztek aesthetic might be an effort to streamline the manufacturing process. “By being philosophically so pure and so functional, Tesla has completely eliminated a very large part of what is the traditional automotive assembly."
https://www.wired.com/story/why-tesla-cybertruck-looks-weird...
> The plusses for a folded stainless steel, origami truck are compelling: no paint shop and no expensive tooling. No Godzilla-scale stamping machines stomping it with multiple strikes. Without all that, the capital and environmental costs of using stainless steel body panels are small. And big attractions for a company that's sensitive to both types of green—cash and environmentalism. Just groove the steel where it's supposed to fold (avoiding cracks) and bend it on simple, cheap machines (like I was actually doing last week with my garage vise!)
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-electric-pi...
> "The truck is consumerist, whereas brutalism’s monumentality is civic."
Does making transportation less polluting not serve a civic function?
> "[But] we don’t see any bolts or gaskets or other details of joinery. Brutalist architects would never allow this. They wanted the method of making and the assembly of parts to be legible — to be put on display as a way of being vividly honest."
They might be on the inside. Again, do all brutalist buildings have their wiring exposed? Function still matters. I'm no expert, but I would assume that brutalism does not require being an idiot about such things.
We may be mixing Brutalism with functionalism though. Brutalist architects did stuff to just be ugly - just google some Architecture. Besides leaving concrete unpainted, they made expensive choices to "uglify" and push a particular type of aesthetics.
"Brutalism is not concerned with the material as such but rather the quality of material" ... "the seeing of materials for what they were: the woodness of the wood; the sandiness of sand." - Peter Smithson
If any vehicle does this, it's Cybertruck.
The electric motor - the centerpiece of the design - demands a smooth exterior, free of exposed joints (to retort vs other thread commenters calling for exposed joints).
Being a pickup truck, it demands capacity and strength. The bed is big, easily un/covered (without the awkward hard or soft covers).
The design celebrates the quality of the primary material: "30x" stainless steel. There it is, full flat unpainted glory, zero embellishments. No curves because it's too hard to curve; no relenting in material to achieve 'normal' looks.
The interior is simple robust (leather) seating for 6 full-size adult cyberpunks. The control is an oversimplified steering column, with a single large flat panel touchscreen. Nothing else.
As one frequently at odds with brutalism, this clearly is - and I want it.
https://www.equipmentworld.com/electric-truck-maker-bollinge...
Can't believe I read all the way to the Pseud's Corner wankery denouement.
The truck can be called (neo-neo-)modernist since it does away with indulgent decorative curves that bulbous current cars are full of (thanks to people learning to produce panels of whatever which shape), with barely-comprehensible shapes of headlights spilling all over the hood and sides, and rather importantly with radiator grille and other front decorations which are the last bastion of recognizable brand imagery on the otherwise-identical cars of today.
The truck is a reaction to current trends, just like Rivian. And like design movements were reactions to the preceding ones during the whole of the twentieth century.
Though I suppose a truck with a steel reinforced poured-concrete chassis is a little beyond even Musk's olympian ambitions.
That car as shown will absolutely not pass crash testing, European homologation and pedestrian impact, both issues with it being 1/8” stainless steel panels (separate discussion how those make no damn sense!). It has no mirrors, or wipers.
What has been shown is a roughly drawn concept.
Anyone that thinks they’re going to get exactly that and exactly for $40,000 hasn’t been around the concept car scene.
I’ll engage discussions on this thing when it’s not just a PR move.
(Source: automotive engineer)
Not even getting in to ped impact.
There is no way 1/8” steel panels will cut it. There will need to be some thin panels and some serious crumple zone going on “under the hood”.
Perhaps Tesla will make an EU-complaint version some day, but this is not that truck.
The market for pickup trucks in Europe is a rounding error compared to the market for pickup trucks in North America.
/Neither a pickup truck nor Tesla enthusiast.
We have no idea how the structure reacts to crashes, and any assumptions right now are pointless.
https://www.audi.de/de/brand/de/neuwagen/tron/audi-e-tron.ht...
In German:
> Effizienz, Sicherheit und ein neuartiges Technik- und Fahrerlebnis – der optionale virtuelle Außenspiegel des Audi e-tron bietet Ihnen einen echten Mehrwert. Der flache Träger reduziert die Fahrzeugbreite gegenüber einem herkömmlichen Außenspiegel um 15 Zentimeter und damit auch den Luftwiderstand und das Windgeräuschniveau. Eine kleine Kamera projiziert die Bilder digital auf kontraststarke OLED-Displays ins Innere. Insbesondere bei Dämmerung und in der Nacht erkennen Sie trotz Scheinwerferreflexionen rückwärtige Fahrzeuge gestochen scharf. Der Audi e-tron ist das erste Serienmodell, in dem der virtuelle Außenspiegel zum Einsatz kommt.
Machine translated to English:
> Efficiency, safety and an innovative technology and driving experience - the optional virtual exterior mirror of the Audi e-tron offers you real added value. The flat carrier reduces the vehicle width by 15 centimeters compared to a conventional exterior mirror and thus also the air resistance and wind noise level. A small camera digitally projects the images into the interior on high-contrast OLED displays. Particularly at dusk and at night, you can see rear-end vehicles with pin-sharp clarity despite headlight reflections. The Audi e-tron is the first production model in which the virtual exterior mirror is used.
> bei Personenkraftwagen sowie Lastkraftwagen, Zugmaschinen und Sattelzugmaschinen mit einer zulässigen Gesamtmasse von nicht mehr als 3,5 t Spiegel oder andere Einrichtungen für indirekte Sicht, die in den im Anhang zu dieser Vorschrift genannten Bestimmungen für diese Fahrzeuge als vorgeschrieben bezeichnet sind; die vorgeschriebenen sowie vorhandene gemäß Anhang III Nummer 2.1.1 der im Anhang zu dieser Vorschrift genannten Richtlinie zulässige Spiegel oder andere Einrichtungen für indirekte Sicht müssen den im Anhang zu dieser Vorschrift genannten Bestimmungen entsprechen;
which says mirrors or anything that shows this indirect view. (but I doubt that there are that many things which are "showing this indirect view")
The US and some other jurisdictions don't allow these cameras as an alternative, which was my point.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/cybertruck?lang=en
Have you seen a concept car from a traditional car makers on the road after its unveil?
In fact that's the difference between Tesla and other carmakers. They don't do concepts with grand future vision, design clues, etc like the others. Given their record it's likely the production versions of Roadster 2, Semi and Cybertruck will look the same as what we've seen.
E.g. https://www.tesla.com/sv_se/cybertruck/design#battery
The content and the price is localized (e.g. it's at an even 1000 SEK).
There is a caveat listed: "All configurations have US specifications only."
Btw: here's poll on teslaclubsweden.com on who has "ordered" a CyberTruck: (the bars show different regions of Sweden)
https://teslaclubsweden.se/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=19171
I hesitate to call these people idiots (mostly because that's rude) .. but.. they would certainly benefit from consumer protection laws.
> But Banham and his fellow brutalists had a purpose behind their intense design, something more than just a building.
> And on this, Pasnik, argues, the two groups — Brutalists and Tesla designers — couldn’t be more different....
> “The truck is consumerist, whereas brutalism’s monumentality is civic. The truck’s boldness serves the bravado of an individual, whereas brutalism’s visual power was meant to project the shared dignity of the public realm.”
https://nationwideonlinetrailersales.com/products/pj-trailer...
Even without Tesla, a change is in dire need.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/coe1mnbupjv8qbe/1_uEe9rvbQB8XM6uYW...
* four wheels
* meets legal size limits
* reasonable aerodynamic characteristics
* room for passengers
* sufficiently sized windows and doors
* crumplezone
* reasonable collision and roll characteristics
* front that mitigates damage to pedestrians
* (for SUVs) large trunk with large door
* practical to manufacture
* etc
the design space is pretty limited, and so it’s not surprising that all vehicles in a given class look pretty similar. It’s like how most large planes look pretty similar - it’s not laziness, it’s optimization within constraints.
It’s also worth noting that the Cybertruck, as shown, does not meet a lot of the basic requirements (rear views, windshield wipers, impact characteristics, headlight legality) so any shipping version will have to have a changes made towards a more traditional form.
But it makes sense: all cars try to be as aerodynamic as possible, while creating as much space for the passengers in the smallest size possible. The better designers get at optimising for these requirements, the more cars will look alike.
Its rather nice, comparable (but not as good) as e.g. the Lamborghini Countach and similar designs.
i disagree. it's brutalist. the article says so. it meets all the criteria, except: it's a truck.
c'mon. that's reductive pedantry at its worst.
> The term ‘brutalism’ was coined by the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson, and popularised by the architectural historian Reyner Banham in 1954. It derives from ‘Béton brut’ (raw concrete) and was first associated in architecture with Le Corbusier, who designed the Cite Radieuse in Marseilles in the late-1940s.
But since the word can be used as an insult in English, it's used with no reference to its original meaning, obscuring the fact it's a botched translation.
Furthermore, “brutal” is also a word in French, meaning the same thing as it does in English.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that the Frenchmen who coined the phrase intended it to refer both to the rawness or the concrete and the brutality of the design, they can’t have been unaware of the associations.
I mean, "brutal" and "raw" are related concepts. In fact I think the words are sometimes paired in English - i.e. "raw brutality".
You could argue that it's not brutalism if it's not concrete, but that seems unnecessarily narrow to me.
Is it unreasonable to look at a large construction of raw concrete and think of a host of related concepts, that it looks raw, hard, unforgiving, and stark?
in english, in the modern age, brutalist implies brutality.
It bends too little in case of an accident.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-hits-traffic-pylon-with-new-cy...
Also the idea that brutalism could be something to aspire to is misguided
> Mark Pasnik is a founding principal of the Boston-based design firm OverUnder and a professor of architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology.
If you go to the OverUnder website, the proposal to “revamp” the existing Boston City Hall is just an admonition that brutalism sucks and is miserable to be around.
> The design creates vibrant counterpoints of light and liveliness to City Hall's monumental framework. It proposes a series of tactical modifications to the building's lowest and most public levels: clarifying way-finding; improving views, light, and sustainability; occupying abandoned spaces; and increasing the building's openness to the city.
> Daylight from the atrium would stream downward into what is presently a dark hall. Light globes, colorful wall panels, and illuminated information screens would create an animated atmosphere.
So, adding in all the things brutalism is not. Guys. Just tear the thing down. No amount of aesthetic improvements will make people like that place.
www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/amp/Glen-Park-BART-station-could-soon-be-an-official-14189658.php