Fiat Cinquecento - Dante Giacosa.

There are cars that I love for their styling, some for their complexity and sophistication. Others I love because they were launched well ahead of their time, on a public that didn't understand them. Some cars are products of brilliant style, others are marvels of engineering but only very, very few are masterpieces of simplicity in packaging.

To document the history of one of the most familiar cars ever built would be futile and boring, exept to not that the car was launched in 1957, and produced with a series of detail modifications until 1975. The Fiat 500N as launched in '57 is the car credited with making Italy upwardly mobile. In an industrialised nation with a booming population, Fiat saw the opportunity to take the masses off their scooters and into 'proper' cars.

The Italians are responsible for the most beautiful cars ever built, but they are cars with short briefs - supercars, with the necessity to carry only two passengers, a small amount of luggage; the vehicles cost and thirst not often being relevant. Today, 52 years since the car's launch it still serves to demonstrate that the best designs are the simplest, the most straight forward and that form can follow function, yet still speak volumes in terms of style.

It is very difficult to think of a car with less mechanical complication that this one. An air-cooled, vertical twin of less than 500cc in capacity is mounted longitudinally in the chassis and drives the rear wheels via a 4-speed transaxle. The engine is cooled by an 8 inch fan incased in a duct that directs air over finned cylinder barrels, the same air is filtered and supplied to the carburetor to prevent icing. The same air again can be directed, at the discretion of the occupants, into the cabin for warmth. Less than 20hp provided a cruising speed of around 80km/h and simultaneous ignition strokes on both cylinders offered just enough torque to make the car useful in urban areas, and when laden with passengers and some luggage. Some detail changes over the years made the 500 slightly faster, but most made the car generally more robust and as a result, ever cheaper to run.

The simplicity continues; at the rear with coil springs and dampers controlling swing arms and at the front a single, transverse leaf and a kingpin at each side make do. Peer under the front valance and you'll find a steering box, rods and a master cylinder for the braking system. Electricity is provided by a dynamo to the car's few accessories.

All specifications considered, it is always fascinating to then drive one and marvel at how these diminutive commuter cars, built to such a utilitarian specification can thrill the driver in such a sporting way! Can this be the reason that the Fiat Cinquecento is so revered today by the cognoscenti and the casual observer alike? Is it because Giacosa managed to exercise the ability to satisfy the needs of a bottom-end of the market car and make so beautiful and timeless to look at?

Today's fascination with retro-models and re-inventing the hardest-hitting and most produced cars of the century past is not an indication of how good the 500 was. We have after all seen reinterpretations of the Mini and the VW Beetle as well as Fiat's new 500, but in dimensional and stylistic terms, the new 500 is the closest to its namesake of the cars mentioned and I think that although that might undermine the reason I am writing about the car, it might also serve to demonstrate how right they got it first time round.

mercedes benz - colour coded hubcap

Year to year, decade to decade and one stylist to another, most evolutions of any manufacturer's cars from one generation to the next carry some common components. Engines, gearboxes, instruments and controls are common. Sometimes, other secondary mechanical parts find their way from one model to its successor. Find an Italian car of almost any era, and then play 'spot the part sharing' amongst cars its junior and senior and you'll undoubtedly come up trumps on indicator lamp lenses, light control stalks or horns that are all, inevitably hidden or utilised in a fashion that conceals their true origin, or indeed the fact that the very part in question has been in production for decades, often on a far lesser model.

The key, is that when parts are shared they are shared discretely to avoid the common consumer from drawing often pointless comparisons from one car to another.

One design element that has always perplexed me in the sheer length of time that it saw production is the classic, pressed tin and colour-coded Mercedes Benz hub cap. I think the design first saw the light of day in the fourties on the curvy, separate-chassied 300s. Then, on the car considered by most to be the first 'modern-era' Mercedes; the W120 'Ponton', which was released in the early 1950's. Into the 60's, it adorned the wheels of the subsequent W111 'heckeflosse', or 'Fintail', the W108 S class of the late 60's and early 70's and its W113 SL contemporary. When Bruno Sacco replaced Paul Bracq at the helm of the styling department and brought forth the new generation cars such as the W116 S-class and the R107 SL, that famous hubcap remained, as it had upon the steel wheels of the compact W114 & 115 cars that saw the end of Bracq's Stuttgart styling days. The W123 compacts that saw Mercedes cars enter the late 70's and early 80's mainstream? Yes, they also had that ubiquitous, colour-coded design conceal the car's hubs and lug-nuts. In fact, the classic metal hubcap nearly made into the nineties, only Sacco's W124 and W126 medium and large sector models respectively, with the newly unadorned, plastic-clad styles giving way to a plastic hub cap with a chrome-plated three-pointed star doing service to designate the car's origins to the profile observer.

A lot of words for a mere car part. But think, what other external, decorative adornment has done time for three decades very nearly unaltered? Bar the generic badge on most cars, 

Not one.

citroen mehari

Driving about in any modern car, it is hard to imagine a time and a place where people would have considered using something so spartan as a Mehari as daily transport. In warmer parts of Europe, North Africa and in the Mediterranean, Meharis were popular choices for transport for their virtues as a light and robust, frugal and fun mode of transport. Admittedly, a car as breezy as Citroen's plastic jeep isn't going to find a loving home in colder climes, but those that had scant regard for a roof or little more protection against the elements than a pair of vinyl side-screens and scrap of plastic for a 'roof', loved the quirky machine.

144 000 Meharis were built between 1968 and 1988. In mass productions terms that's not a lot of cars, but the survival rate is quite high. The sheer simplicity of the car, a unitary construction of moulded ABS plastic with drive train from the 2CV6 and suspension assemblies from the more civilised Dyane lent it simplicity of manufacture, assembly, maintenance and use. Although a 4X4 version was built, light weight gave even the basic front-drive version relatively able off-road performance, the flat twin enabling a low centre of gravity when fitted in the plastic tub.

Whatever the specification or the car's abilities as a utility, its personality as a cheeky, paired-down working vehicle, its identity as a Citroen has given it chic, which allowed it to age gracefully. It takes its place along side DS, SM, 2CV and the Ami as one of the all time Citroen classic designs.

the george hotel - harry b gibbs

The George Hotel. St Kilda Victoria, Australia.

Here, I discuss specifically the four-story corner structure, a landmark of the suburb of St. Kilda in Melbourne, Victoria. 

Hotels, often the domain of designers and architects that have been given a certain element of 'free reign' or, perhaps a little more artistic license than can often be witnessed in the finished products that are the more mundane commercial structures such as office blocks and other administrative structures. Hotels are, and always have been places for people to unwind, relax, indulge in gastronomic delights, escape the reality of their own day-to-day. Hotels are buildings that need to be designed in an alluring manner, to be as much of a draw card in many instances, as the food and fare that are sold inside the buildings. In today's diverse society we are used to our food and beverage needs and wants being served from many and varied types of operations from as varied a range of buildings. However, in the 1800's the 'hotel' was the cornerstone of the social-lives of all those affluent enough to enjoy them. Most hotels provided all the social, entertainment, refreshing beverage and accommodation needs to a population local to that particular institution, and it is by this rational and by this design that the legendary George Hotel came to be.

The 1890 construction on the corner of Fitzroy and Gray streets in St Kilda is a facade known not just to today's St Kilda locals, but to a whole generation and more, of people who have been seduced by the new wave of culinary pursuits pedaled by the commercial inhabitants of this building. The flaking white paint, circular turret sporting a single flagpole and the corner entry to what is known today as the Melbourne Wine Room have become not just a significant landmark of a significant Melbourne precinct, but an icon of good times, refinement of design and of an individual who is in many ways responsible for the dining habits of an entire city; Melbourne.

The Harry B Gibbs designed building was completed in 1890, and adjoined the earlier five-story building on Fitzroy street to become what we accept today as the George. Gloriously detailed in a fashion now completely absent from almost all adjoining commercial architecture in the area, the George serves as a time-marker for every significant era in the area's past. In the days when St Kilda was a fashionable sea-side resort town for Melbourne's well-heeled who would arrive by train across the street at the 1857-completed St Kilda Train Station, to the seventies and early eighties before the great hotel was abandoned when it was the host of the 'Crystal Ballroom', the venue for visiting punk rock outfits such as the Sex Pistols. The George has seen many turbulent times as a seedy and often undesirable hang-out for drug-dealers, bikies and other low-life that prompted the cancellation of the hotel's liquor license by Victorian Liquor and Gaming. A sad end to a long life that started as one of the most glamerous and well-appointed hotels in the entire state.

Few buildings, even of the same era in Victoria have the same level of detailing. A detailing that lent elegance and prestige now in its purposefully disheveled state, as it did in the late 1800's when it was brand new. As a design, the lure for me is the detailing. It is a quality that is largely absent from building exteriors today. It is a quality that lends distinction, and cachet like chrome detailing on a car. And having lived in an apartment behind this glorious building, and walked past it nearly every day, visiting often to drink and dine like many others who lived in the area I developed an great appreciation and fascination with it that makes it specially significant to me.

In summary I will add, there were periods in the Hotel's turbulent history when it came close to being knocked down and re-developed. These were the seventies, and the proposed re-design would have dated within 20 years. The George has stood the test of time, consulting architects in the early nineties were wise in retaining the buildings flaking facade, worn like a nod to all the decades of glory and neglect that it had seen like the wrinkles on an old lady's face.

We can thank the late Don Levy Fitzpatrick, a pioneer of hospitality for having the vision to purchase the building in the late eighties, sympathetically renovate it, and establish some of Australia's simplest and best food and beverage concepts within its many cavities, for this great design's life lasting into the new century.

Many designs are altered for the eyes of generation's appreciation, but some designs are so correct that they need not be toyed with. The George Hotel is one of those.

cameron offices - john andrews.

Cameron Offices, Belconnen Town Centre. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.

In the volumes of varied disciplines in the school of architecture, one common thread must surely be consistent - the pleasure of inhabiting the structure. Whether it be as a residence, or as a building used for shorter stays, any building must surely have to conform to various measures for pleasurable human occupation for it to then be considered a successful design.

 

In the short life of the Brutalist movement, it seems as though that fundamental was in some ways bypassed, as so many of the Brutalist structures designed and built in the seventies and eighties have since been de-commissioned, their intended purpose having been unachievable or simply, they were unpleasant buildings to inhabit.

 

Not all, but almost any true Brutalist building is a working design, a commercial structure housing, more often than not, administrative businesses or car parks, or buildings that have no reason for soft aesthetics to play any part in their success as a matter of commercial longevity for either their creators, or their eventual owners. The Cameron Offices in Belconnen, a satellite of Canberra, Australia's national capital are a perfect example of a superstructure designed along a set of principals, to satisfy a need. Sadly, not by any shortcoming of their brilliant creator John Andrews, their purpose was contrived and the vast, dominating structure lasted barely 20 years before being almost completely demolished in 2007.

 

The Cameron Offices were designed with the intention of becoming the focal point of the centre of Belconnen. Their construction began in 1970 and took a whopping seven years to complete. The basis of the design is a series of pavilions, seven in total, linked by walkways. Gardens in between each pavilion were planted out with native Australian vegetation and look as though they served as gigantic atriums for office staff to spend their disposable time wandering around and conversing. One can imagine what John Andrew's period artistic renditions of these atriums might have looked like.

 

The primary material of construction is concrete, and I think that speaking for myself this is potentially why like many other examples of Brutalism, this design is so inspiring to me. Concrete, an unwieldy material - not for the amateur craftsman, not a material that someone can really imagine using unless they have the equipment and the experience necessary to manipulate it. Relatively complex in construction and heavy when complete, with a cold and unwelcoming air about it. But the Brutalist architects like Andrews did magnificent things with concrete, Cameron Offices had several outdoor sculptures such as the 'Optic Galaxy' a seven meter high assembly of curved geometric arrangements and a water fountain that offered relief from the sharp angles of the rest of the building. In engineering terms the offices were a triumph; a system of  large pretensioned beams spanned over the courtyards, creating a pergola effect over the gardens and at the same time connected to the post tensioned columns which supported the floor slabs of the wings. The floor slabs stepped back on the north elevation as the building approached ground level, creating natural overhang shading to the glazed walls. Brilliant? Possibly, but not brilliant enough.

 

The concrete finish was very porous, allowing it to become stained by moisture over the years and in Canberra's cold and often bleak winters, this cement behemoth was not a particularly comfortable place to be. It was drafty and unwelcoming and many former workers from the government offices that inhabited it dont look back with fondness.

 

Having raised these points, and noting now that the building is almost 90% gone, it might raise questions as to why this building, this mega-structure rates as one of my favourite designs. It was a prominent building, in an undeveloped area. When it was built, it was Australia's largest office complex and, it raises emotions in people: some love it, whilst others loath it. Many of the traditionally more appreciated eras of architecture dont promote such emotion, intrigue or even disgust.

 

The Cameron Offices was listed on the Australian Heritage Listing as it was a very significant design within the movement that it belonged. Strangely, and despite the heritage listing that it received, more of it was demolished than was previously understood by most architecture enthusiasts and lovers of the building were lead to beleive. It was somewhat misplaced, had a complicated and ultimately a short life - but it broke with convention, made a statement and made people take notice. Love it or hate it, all will agree that it was truly unique, it will be remembered by design junkies, architects and the Canberra inhabitants for years to come. 

entwicklung 34 - claus luthe

If an article of any description feels good to use, it must be designed properly or, at least have design merit.

BMW cars have long had a reputation for being well built, and well designed. In some instances it arguably undeserved for in later years they have been known to put an emphasis on a car's equipment and features before absolute quality. None the less, there have been some models which were renowned for their beauty, some for their performance and some for the sheer fact that they re-wrote the genre or the class in which they belonged. The E34 5-series is probably not a model remembered for any one particular quality, but step into any of the myriad of available iterations of the 1988 - 1997 '5ers', and you will find possibly one of, if not the most solidly honed automobiles to ever leave the production line at Munich.

In late 1987, the E34 became the third generation of 5 series BMW, replacing the aging E28.

Wearing the glasses of the late eighties observer, the then new E34 must have looked revolutionary, like a car so modern and tradition-breaking that cars that came before it looked archaic by comparison. It was a creation of Claus Luthe, the man who had been charged with the task of evolving Paul Bracq's E12 into the E28 and then having worn the criticism that it was 'too little, too late'.

Critics can label this man's designs as sober, and sometimes as austere, but the beautifully chiseled E34, whilst neither a product of the avant garde, nor as daring as the later offerings of BMW style chief Chris Bangle, was the beginning of the future for BMW. It managed to look perfectly fresh, yet without doubt a BMW. After the early-eighties launch of the Mercedes Benz W124, the ideals of proportion had changed. Like that car, a Sacco design, the E34 was wider in relation to its length than the E28 that preceeded it. Unlike its Mercedes equivalent, it still demonstrated that a large to medium sized saloon could have a sporting appeal. The E34 was a bolder and heavier looking car than the car it superseded from all angles, and it offered a bold vision of what was to come in the 90's, not just from BMW but from other car builders around the world.

Spindly and fussy chrome detail was all but gone, replaced by folds and swages. At last, the forward slanting attitude of the traditional BMW grille was gone. In profile, the trademark kidneys were exactly vertical and were housed tidily between black plastic grilles and the familiar four-headlamp arrangement that had begun in the early seventies on the E12. That grille was also much lower in profile within the relationship of the bumper thickness, giving a lower and more aggressive look from the front. The days of chrome bumpers were waved goodbye with a nod to tight-fitting colour coded units front and rear.

Flush glass all round and a bonnet with a neat trailing edge that almost hid the wipers when parked made the E34 look from the outside, as though its interior would be a terrific place to be. And to that interior, no radical departure from earlier examples of 5er but a practical and comfortable place to guide the well balanced and relatively powerful saloon from. Dials all housed within a binnacle ahead of the driver, and the centre portion of the dash angled toward the driver made the use of its secondary controls easy and guess-free. Operate any of an E34's controls; pull the door handles, twist the ignition key, open the bonnet on its hydraulic struts or watch an electric window close perfectly on its electric lift and you'll get the feeling that these fundamental qualities have improved little in the 20 years since the car's launch, and that today's models will be lucky to operate with the same precision when they are 20 years old!

In my opinion, the single most important significance of the E34 was the introduction in 1992, of the touring model. The first 5 series estate, its styling was a totally successful adaptation of the saloons tidy lines and many observers today will probably agree that while time might not have been perfectly kind to the standard saloon, the touring is a thing of beauty. Beauty in functionality; a mid-sized car that offered a cosseting place for four to five occupants and a choice of flexible engines for a sporting drive, with enough space for all the required luggage and equipment. The tailgate has separately opening glass to avoid having to lift the whole hulk of a rear door when placing small items in the loading area. Eyelets in the floor offer the opportunity to lash down loads and a cargo barrier built into the rear seats to prevent articles entering the passenger compartment under heavy braking or in accident.

Every new model from BMW makes the previous seem obsolete. This is a marketing tool from the company that places consumers in a compromising position; "I love my BMW because it is great, so the new one must be even better"...

It serves to make the products that they worked so very hard on a generation previously seem immediately inadequate. This is a sad state of affairs, as the E34's successor the E39, left many people wanting when it came to owning a car of its generous size and weight (and price) that could handle with such verve, and feel as though it was built to last for life. The E34 is regarded by many as perhaps the best built of all BMW's back catalogue. Parts of its DNA are present in newer and current models but sadly, not the qualities that made the E34 feel like a BMW for life.

Lancia Megagamma - ITALDESIGN

Perhaps not amongst the other items on this site for its purity of form, or its timeless style, or even for its engineering, the Megagamma was for Lancia, perhaps one of its biggest missed opportunities. It isn't a beautiful car, nor did it evolve into one in any other guise, but had Lancia, or rather the parent FIAT, taken the risk of producing this car the history of MPVs would have forever been accredited to the Italians instead of the French with the Matra-built ESPACE.

It isn't a design without merit, and as a devotee of the work of Giugiaro and ITALDESIGN I am perhaps a little bit jaded, but it is hard to ignore the car's purposefulness. Single wiper sprouting from the valance ahead of the windscreen, trailing edge of the roof turned up as a nod toward aerodynamic efficiency, or perhaps a little wink that it really was a Lancia under its ungainly and unusual skin (in the context of 1978). The Megagamma had more of a bonnet than MPVs that followed it, and under that bonnet lay Lancia's 2.5 liter SOHC boxer '4'; another article for this site but an engine of design kudos in its own right.

For purity of purpose the Megagamma scores highly, it could have been a formidable tool in fighting Lancia's ultimate demise. Oh for the lack of foresight from FIAT and what might have been...