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The Cybertruck is not brutalist

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Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#21

Post by et2o »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #19
et2o wrote: post #14

It’s likely by this pedantic definition that no automobile could ever be brutalist. Architectural gatekeeping.

“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.” Literally no product you can buy would meet this definition. I guess you could make a brutalist city bus?

Not to mention a major motivation for electric vehicles is the public good and preservation of the public realm.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#22

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

Brutalist or not, it’s not real.

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)

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#23

Post by perl4ever »

3pt14159 wrote: post #3

It's also more subtly curved than most people give it credit for. I know a guy that is creating 3D models of the truck for some people that want to simulate it in simulated wind-tunnel. He was flabbergasted at how much they could keep the straight looking form while also smuggling in critical curvatures here and there to stop eddy currents from forming.

It seems a lot less curved than any other angular car I've seen, say an early Lotus Esprit.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#24

Post by spectramax »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #18
FisDugthop wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether a covered car can be brutalist, to be honest. When I think of a brutalist car design, I think of go-karts. 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 customiza…

Unnecessarily exposing innards doesn't feel brutalist to me. Covering up the innards is a functional requirement of being a reliable car - you don't want the engine exposed to the elements, for example. You don't want to expose the driver to rain and snow. You don't want to have the frame rust. A huge part of brutalism is not letting design compromise functioning of the object and not hiding the materials that compos…

I agree with you mostly - slight contradiction you say "Unncessarily" and then talk about the functional use of those covers to prevent water and snow ingress. I think what I was alluding to is that a piece of cover for 100% decorative use - no safety, functional or any reason but to make things look nice. That is the "guilt". :)

Definitely agree, unpainted stainless steel is a brutalist trait.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#25

Post by cagenut »

et2o wrote: post #21
Negitivefrags wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.” Literally no product you can buy would meet this definition. I guess you could make a brutalist city bus?

Not to mention a major motivation for electric vehicles is the public good and preservation of the public realm.

its better to think of it more as public harm reduction than public "good"

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#26

Post by toasterlovin »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #19
et2o wrote: post #14

It’s likely by this pedantic definition that no automobile could ever be brutalist. Architectural gatekeeping.

“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.” Literally no product you can buy would meet this definition. I guess you could make a brutalist city bus?

> "the shared dignity of the public realm"

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.)

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#28

Post by jessriedel »

tl;dr: The Cybertruck is not brutalist because it's designers do not promote the same politics as brutalist architects:

> 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.”

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#29

Post by spectramax »

FisDugthop wrote: post #11
spectramax wrote: post #7

I disagree. If one definition of Brutalism is to be honest about materials - then Cybertruck nails that. Unpainted stainless steel is as brutalist as it gets. 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, e…

I'm not sure whether a covered car can be brutalist, to be honest. When I think of a brutalist car design, I think of go-karts. 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 customiza…

I slightly disagree: Go Karts are not used for daily use. When coverings and such are meant for functional use, such as to prevent dust build up or water ingress, they are required and not purely decorative.

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.

Re: The Cybertruck is not brutalist

#30

Post by perl4ever »

msla wrote: post #6
JohnFen wrote: post #2

Maybe it's not brutalist, but it's certainly brutal to the eyes.

Behold the power of a mistranslation: > 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, i…

It seems...not not accurate to me.

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?

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