When form follows function - industrial design

Railway Age, August, 2002 by William C. Vantuono

What is it that sets outstanding designs apart from the mundane? What can good design contribute to a passenger rail system? Leaders in industrial design and architecture offer their viewpoints.

"The conscientious use of design not only enhances transportation services, but makes easier the integration of transportation facilities with community goals and provides more efficient and economic movement."

Twenty-five years after Brock Adams, President Jimmy Carter's Transportation Secretary, said those words, industrial and architectural design are regaining their prominence in the American passenger rail transportation landscape. Not since the days of icons like Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, and Otto Kuhler, who captured the imagination of millions of railroad passengers with timeless designs, has aesthetics commanded so much attention in the U.S. Visually inspiring, ergonomic, functional rolling stock and stations have long been a part of European systems. The American passenger rail renaissance has reached a point where those concepts are becoming increasingly important.

"The visual staying power of railroads is powerful," says NJT Transit Chief Designer Cesar Vergara, IDSA. "Implementation of light rail, airport rail links, and commuter rail services throughout the world is increasing, and the reactions they generate attest to the importance communities place on their aesthetic qualities. A visually attractive system is bound to cause less controversy, attract more passengers, and gain more financial and political support."

"Form follows function." What does it really mean? "It puts industrial design into an engineering context," says Vergara. "It describes the difference between sculpture and industrial design. Sculpture can be any form, since its function is purely to trigger a feeling or reaction. Design can do that as well, but the form should enhance the function of the product to which it is applied, whether it's a locomotive or a potato peeler. That's why an important part of an industrial designer's job is to design products that engineers can build, cost-effectively."

Why is good design so important to a passenger rail system? Why, for example, should a locomotive be visually appealing? "A locomotive is the de facto 'coat of arms' of a railway, the ambassador of all other equipment," says Vergara. "In the 'feeding chain' of ground transportation, it is like the lion--it should look dignified, strong, safe, reliable." But there is also a historical reason: "In the U.S., locomotives are the quintessential examples of the origins of streamlining and industrial design. A bad-looking locomotive is akin to a spoiled apple pie or a losing baseball team." When a locomotive has "gestalt," says Vergara, "it conveys not only shape and color, but a particular feeling."

Is there a particularly American look for a passenger train? Yes, says Vergara. "The answer is simple: silver and corrugated, which is a result of the invention of the shot-welding process applied by the Budd Company beginning in the 1930s," he says. "Corrugation is a form/structural feature built into thin stainless steel sheets to add longitudinal strength and rigidity. The fact that U.S. companies years ago established factories in Portugal and Brazil that manufacture stainless steel railcars has led to a proliferation in the world market of this appearance. People in the U.S. still generally think of passenger railcars as silver with color decals around the windows. The shape--with the notable exception of Amfleet cars--is a little more squarish. As for locomotives, from EMD's classic E units to the F40PH and GE Genesis units (a Vergara design), the American look is one that says, 'I pull trains. I am strong.' That's the feeling I wanted to convey with the PL42AC."

Other than designing equipment or facilities that are aesthetically pleasing as well as functional, what can an industrial designer contribute to an organization, whether it's a transit agency or an engineering firm? "A designer can humanize the engineering process and work as a sort of 'hub' to ensure that one department's idea does not become another one's nightmare," says Vergara. "A designer should be the mortar between the bricks of marketing and engineering. Look at companies like GM and DaimlerChrysler. The CEOs are using their design teams as a management tool to give the company direction."

A question that management frequently asks when debating the merits of a particular design, or the designer that created it, is, "Does this really matter? Will passengers really notice? Will they care?" They probably will. Even for something as commonplace as a railcar restroom, good design can make a difference, "If you got in there," Cesar Vergara told The New York Times recentiy, "and there was a shelf for your cellphone, your coat didn't get stuck in the door, there wasn't water everywhere, and you didn't look in the mirror and say, 'I look dead' because the lighting is so bad, then I've done my job well."