Motor car aesthetics : The contexts of design.
The original, probably naive, aim of the research was to quantify the proportions of car bodies and plot these graphically, with a view to extrapolating future developments. There are a number of objections to such a scheme, the most fundamental being that it pre-supposes an evolutionary process which does not in fact obtain except in certain periods between design revolutions whose incidence cannot be predicted by the model. Neither can such revolutions be related to technological change. Rather, they seem to result from changes occurring on an ideological level; and it was to this level that research was directed.It was postulated that design revolutions occurred as a result of a dialectical relationship between two opposing modes of thought. These modes were characterised respectively as classic and romantic. This terminology is open to criticism, as was any other that could be devised, but is defined at some length in the text.The main body of the text is concerned to demonstrate that changes in car body shape may be best understood in terms of this opposition between classic and romantic, in conjunction with a separate but related opposition between organic and inorganic form.Appendix I considers the political implications of the explanatory model and argues that future developments may be predicted in the light of these.Appendix 2 considers the problem of meaning and explains that it is not yet possible to devise a coherent theory; it does however indicate the importance of certain factors that such a theory should embrace.Appendix 3 presents the results of an experiment designed to test the explanatory model used.
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Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom).