I've been reading "House of Suns", the last Reynolds book I haven't read. There is a lot of talk about wedge shaped shuttles. It got me thinking about film sci-fi now vs. when it was at it's most influencial, the end of the 70's. Manufacturing was changing from machine to computer driven, and the shape of of spaceships, cars, robots, etc changed accordingly. All current futuristic design looks like it passed through a digestive tract. I have been looking at a lot of Ralph Mcquarrie stuff at work lately, and it really makes me appreciate the hard-angled approach to design that was intended to be modeled by hand in a machine shop, not a rapid prototyper. Don't get me wrong, I love self replicating machinery, but it would be nice to see an aesthetic middle ground. We shouldn't abandon primitive solids just because we can.
At the end of my sophomore year of college I did this group project with my friends Hugh, Kenny and Leonardo. We were supposed to create a 7" cube that evoked the work of a famous designer, essentially a branding exercise. We chose Syd Mead, specifically his Tron era stuff. We got a little ambitious using hand-milled aluminum. I also almost killed myself wiring the lighting, you can see the scoring where electricity arced of the case. It was totally worth it though as every class after us has been biting our style on this project. I loved making this, but I can't really use it in my portfolio since it doesn't really do anything besides try to burn down your house (it gets really hot while its on). Apologies to Syd Mead.
