| << | February 2010 | >> | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | ||||||
- Keechdesign News (24)
- Design Classics (8)
- Opinion (21)
- Creative Report (32)
- In The Know (13)
- Inspiration (16)
- Design Top Five (8)
Small Is Beautiful
Posted by: Keech on 13th Jan 2009 in Opinion
It seems that most designers (and especially architects) that I meet have an innate love of aircraft. Perhaps it's because the design has been so utterly condensed in the pursuit of the ultimate goal. Aircraft are beautiful but they do incredible things too; like fly. They are a kind of visual onomatopoeia; they look like what they do, in a more profound sense than the maxim 'form follows function' can convey.
Having recently flown several times to the Isles of Scilly, I have fallen in love with small aircraft. I've been on the DeHavilland Otter from Newquay to St Mary's, and more recently the Britten-Norman Islander. This really is a small plane - there were only three of us and the pilot (didn't look like room for any more) and we sat bunched up behind him, the internal space being smaller than my car.
The pilot seemed to spend a lot of time cranking and winding things up, prior to firing up the go-kart engines. And when he said into his radio that he had three 'souls' on board I felt a twang of mortality. As we skimmed the waves at between two and three thousand feet he spent time nonchalantly channel hopping the radio (looking for Radio 2 perhaps), peering up, down and sideways out of the windows (looking for what? I kept wondering) and filling in his flight log (or was it the crossword?). I thought at one point he might turn around and say "look - no hands!".
But I loved every minute of it. On this type of aircraft you are never more than a few centimetres from any part of it, so there is plenty of opportunity to think about its design. It's all so matter-of-fact, from the no-nonsense dials and levers to the late 70s Austin Maxi door handles. Small aircraft like this really bring home the spirit of aviation.
I've been fascinated by them ever since. The MC-10 Cri Cri (pictured) is a real beauty. It is the world's smallest twin engined aircraft and was designed in 1971 by Michel Colomban. The Cri Cri was conceived as a home build aircraft with aerobatic capabilities. It is less than 4 metres in length and the wingspan is around 4.8 metres. The unloaded weight is about 72kg. There was even a jet engined version apparently built by pilot Nicolas Charmont. There is an excellent site with lots more information here.
There are no comments. Be the first to post one.
Posted by: Keech on 13th Jan 2009 in Opinion
It seems that most designers (and especially architects) that I meet have an innate love of aircraft. Perhaps it's because the design has been so utterly condensed in the pursuit of the ultimate goal. Aircraft are beautiful but they do incredible things too; like fly. They are a kind of visual onomatopoeia; they look like what they do, in a more profound sense than the maxim 'form follows function' can convey.
Having recently flown several times to the Isles of Scilly, I have fallen in love with small aircraft. I've been on the DeHavilland Otter from Newquay to St Mary's, and more recently the Britten-Norman Islander. This really is a small plane - there were only three of us and the pilot (didn't look like room for any more) and we sat bunched up behind him, the internal space being smaller than my car.
The pilot seemed to spend a lot of time cranking and winding things up, prior to firing up the go-kart engines. And when he said into his radio that he had three 'souls' on board I felt a twang of mortality. As we skimmed the waves at between two and three thousand feet he spent time nonchalantly channel hopping the radio (looking for Radio 2 perhaps), peering up, down and sideways out of the windows (looking for what? I kept wondering) and filling in his flight log (or was it the crossword?). I thought at one point he might turn around and say "look - no hands!".
But I loved every minute of it. On this type of aircraft you are never more than a few centimetres from any part of it, so there is plenty of opportunity to think about its design. It's all so matter-of-fact, from the no-nonsense dials and levers to the late 70s Austin Maxi door handles. Small aircraft like this really bring home the spirit of aviation.
I've been fascinated by them ever since. The MC-10 Cri Cri (pictured) is a real beauty. It is the world's smallest twin engined aircraft and was designed in 1971 by Michel Colomban. The Cri Cri was conceived as a home build aircraft with aerobatic capabilities. It is less than 4 metres in length and the wingspan is around 4.8 metres. The unloaded weight is about 72kg. There was even a jet engined version apparently built by pilot Nicolas Charmont. There is an excellent site with lots more information here.
Comments
There are no comments. Be the first to post one.
