Visian
look out!!!
Who designed the GS's head lights? Jack Elam.
no, bill the cat.
ian
(proud as hell of his ugly-ass GS)
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Who designed the GS's head lights? Jack Elam.
It's a highly industrial, minimalist and practical aesthetic founded upon the notion that form should follow function. In other words, decoration is discouraged in favor of the object's beauty being the result of its functional and structural elements.
But isn't this like the fact that no one thinks their own kids are ugly?
I used to get compliments on my F800ST, but I'd also get people asking what's up with the hump.
2.) Except for the R-1200-ST, I think BMW makes some of the best looking bikes on the planet.
Yes. If the function is to sell motorcycles, for example, HD has certainly designed a functional brand, image and motorcycle styling that is consistent with achieving that function.
The aesthetic introduced by the German Bauhaus, however, was something of a revolt against the excessive nature of German decorative styles that existed before World War I. The school also existed during a time of great social upheaval in German society that corresponded to Germany's war defeat, the Great Depression and the socialist, anti-bourgeois mindsets that were gaining traction.
The Bauhaus positioned itself as taking the best of German culture, building upon it, and rejecting the decorative, class- and region-based aesthetics that had typified German design and crafts before that time. They built a new aesthetic around efficiency, engineering, precision and technology. Their idea was that beauty (or form) should stem directly from these qualities and should not be grafted on as a decorative afterthought.
BMW motorcycles, like most modern German industrial design, are a reflection of this 20th Century German design movement.
Chrome plating, for example, is not part of this aesthetic unless the chrome plating serves a functional purpose.
German aesthetics are highly influenced by the Bauhaus school of design that existed in Germany between the World Wars. If you're not familiar with the Bauhaus, its designers, artists and architects pretty much set the stage for all modern design that we take for granted today ÔÇö everything from steel and glass skyscrapers to typography to freeway overpasses.
It's a highly industrial, minimalist and practical aesthetic founded upon the notion that form should follow function. In other words, decoration is discouraged in favor of the object's beauty being the result of its functional and structural elements.
Chrome plating, for example, is not part of this aesthetic unless the chrome plating serves a functional purpose. This aesthetic view, however, most definitely does not neglect "looks" in favor of engineering. Instead, the premise is that an object's beauty should be derived from and should not be separated from its function, and that doing so actually lessens the beauty of the object and risks compromising its function.
Viewed from this Bauhaus aesthetic, Harley Davidsons, for example, might be regarded as aesthetically inferior. Instead of HDs obtaining their beauty through the skillful synthesis of form and function, the traditional HD look is merely a non-functional, decorative veneer of chrome, fancy paint, styled noise and cartoonish affectations applied to a functionally compromised motorcycle.
So they were just copying F L Wrights work/ideas?
As he put it, Style is not what you start out with, its what you end up with; it comes about as a result of the form and function of the design. It was that view from which his "Modern" architecture developed.
RM