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Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Rams' functionalism is itself a reaction to the ornateness for its own sake that characterized a lot of design in decades prior. But these days functionalism itself seems to be the hegemonic school of thought - consider Apple, for example, which hews closely to functionalist precepts by deliberate intent, and provides a lot of cues for other companies. So a reaction to what was itself once the challenger and is now the incumbent seems reasonable.

That said, I agree the aesthetic here under discussion is pretty miserable. Ostentatious CNC tool marks might impress some, but to me it just says they couldn't be bothered to finish manufacturing the thing before they shipped it, and it shares with brutalism the trait of being deliberately unwelcoming to the senses as a way of demanding attention be paid to itself.

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> So a reaction to what was itself once the challenger and is now the incumbent seems reasonable.

I agree with everything you've said, but would just point out that the pendulum has perhaps started swinging in the other direction: a lot of folks in the design world are starting to push back against the associated minimalist/functionalist aesthetic that has taken over much of the world: it can make our built environments feel sterile, boring, and robotic.

Yeah, I get that, although I'm not sure if functionalistic design is only to blame; I'd look also to a culture of disposability that inculcates the idea that if something isn't or ceases to be fully satisfactory as received from the factory, the way to address that is by throwing it out and buying something else, rather than fixing or modifying it to better suit the need.

Design is meant to exist in conversation with culture, and after such a long time developing a society that revolves around consumption I think that meaning has been lost. "Right to repair" is a partial reaction to this also, and valuable as such, but what I really want to see is a swing back in the direction of the idea that made things can and should be made to last - not as perfect, impenetrable monoliths of capital-D Design, but as longstanding participants in the lives of the people with whom they're surrounded, and which can be and are changed by those people to better meet the needs of the day and year and decade.

That isn't something the money power has any incentive to want these days, of course; every thing that need not be replaced today is a thing for which no replacement will be bought or sold today. But this is not a novel problem, and it has been solved before.

Exactly. The removal of user modification from culture is a big loss.

In the 90s, it was nothing to stitch a patch on a piece of clothing that made it uniquely yours, or artfully distress your jeans.

Now, people just... don't. Because they can buy them like that.

Great for consumerism. Less great for individuality and building self-reliance.

This product isn't any less sterile, boring and robotic.

Just the opposite. It's ostentatiously sterile, boring and robotic.

While also being retro, and trying very hard to look like something that might have appeared in the original Matrix movie - which was 24 years ago.

Visually, it's unoriginal, which is an unforgivable design sin - literally a stock laplet with pointless metal bits stuck on which will get in the way if you're trying to use it seriously.

It fails as fashion because it looks like a mess, neither cool, exotic, nor aspirational.

And it fails as design because while it's - perhaps - trying to be ironic, it takes itself too seriously to be funny. And it's just not very functional.

> it shares with brutalism the trait of being deliberately unwelcoming to the senses as a way of demanding attention be paid to itself.

Interesting, is that what you take away from brutalism? To me brutalist design and art is deliberately unwelcoming to critique the blandness and safeness of our modern cushioned existence, not a puerile drawing of attention. I actually enjoy the aesthetic.

But then, disclaimer, I'm a sucker for histrionics and theatrical gimmicks.

That's a reading of brutalism I haven't encountered before. It's not one with which I find myself at all favorably impressed, not least because a phrase like "the blandness and safeness of our modern cushioned existence" suggests a level of engagement with history that, speaking charitably, could stand to be much further developed. But maybe there's a more detailed treatment of this analysis that you could point me to.

I'm sorry, I'm being vague. I didn't mean it like that, I'm not talking about why le corbusier's had a love affair with concrete. I was thinking about how I hate corporate memphis and the design of 95% of UIs, and how I wish there was more "nu-brutalist" web/app design to give all those bland pastels the finger.

Ah, I think I see what you might be driving at. Would it be fair to summarize the view as holding that, beyond valuable affordances for safety equivalent to handrails and warning signs, etc., it does no one any favors to attempt to conceal the essential complexity of the technology underpinning much of contemporary society?

I went to high school in what was essentially an old castle-looking building- when they converted it to have electricity and stuff, they put in conduit and the like, but then painted it to match the walls.

One of my friends did a bit of photoshop to see what it would look like if the conduit was instead a dull gray and it looked so much better and so distinctive that it felt like I had been robbed.

I think there's a reason everybody seems to love the star trek engine room

The irony being of course, that huge flat slabs are not somehow inherently more "functional" than something with a handle, or a screen that doesn't break, or a back that doesn't scratch etc.

We just kind of hand-wavy announce that anything boring, sleek, or rectangular is "functional". It's not.

I didn't say "functional"; I said "functionalist" and "functionalism". The latter terms refer to a school of industrial design that aspires to its particular definition of the former.

I can respect the motivation behind this; I favor midcentury modern furniture not least precisely because it doesn't insist on itself with an excess of ornament, as Rams also inveighs against. But there's a seasonality in any new idea; after the first generation for whom it's revolutionary comes a second for whom it's the status quo ante, and most of those raised with any norm will defend and uphold it for its own sake just because it's what they know to be "normal", whether or not the idea itself or its application still makes sense. Hence the canonization of an aesthetic based originally around the idea that no aesthetic deserves to be canonized.

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