As I journey toward completing my undergrad in Mechanical Engineering there are a few areas I’d like to refine in my craftsmanship. I understand that this is a process toward a goal that will probably never be completed, but I’d like to better articulate my design intents. In this sense it’s largely about executing the plans, but my meaning is to hone what artistic feeling I’d like to express. Something I want to work on as I finish school, but plan to always improve.
This class is my first opportunity to largely focus on the specific aesthetics to the things that I design. I want to experience having design as a priority rather than functionality or logistics that are typical to my work so far. So far I’ve planned a paradigm shift when evaluating my work. Rather than before checking boxes for functionality, like: does it meet strength requirements or contain enough fluid, there will be a focus on subjective aspects like how it makes me feel. I suspect a difficulty of this is the non yes/no nature inherent to subjective evaluation. There is my specific aspiration to make things that I feel are good enough despite wanting to probably always wanting to improve them.
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It can be really hard to try and put form before functionality, or to balance the two at the same time. Maybe if you pick a project that has a greater emphasis on form, it will be easier to separate the prioritization of the two? Many sculptures are inherently aesthetic but require a great deal of engineering to pull off. The same goes with a lot oc the burning man projects that Hertzberg showed us in class.
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Yeah, I think we have to sometimes draw a line about aesthetics and engineering. At what point is aesthetics or engineering good enough, and is there a way to meet both requirements elegantly? I do like the approach this class takes of almost making aesthetics a design criterium that can be picked from a list.
I really agree that as engineers, we have a hard time accepting work/projects which have a subjective nature to them – a non yes/no solution is no longer easy for us… Articulating your design intents and focusing on how a design makes you feel are great aspirations, especially for senior year!