Cognition And Deconstruction Of Car Styling Surface

This research is granted by National Program on Key Basic Research Project(973 Program) and commercial car styling projects. Taking car styling surface as subject, this research studies the cognition and deconstruction of st yling surface and proposes design thinking model and methodology on this basis, which has both theoretic and practical significance.The topic of this research is 《Cognition and Deconstruction of Car Styling Surface》. Firstly, all the concept, term and theory in this research belongs to car styling domain,and multiple angles from art, culture and technology is needed. Secondly, styling surface, which is an important factor in car styling, is the key subject of this research, indicating that this research is object-focused and closely related to design practice. Thirdly, "cognition and deconstruction" are the purposes of this research, which means this research tries to make a deep understanding of styling surface from various perspectives and to accomplish cognition and deconstruction of the essence of styling surface. It is worth mentioning that this research is also interrelated with some tradition Chinese thinking on artifact.This research uses various research methods, including "case study", "questionnaire and interview", "cogniti ve experiment" and "field research". Also, this research involves three design cases which are "Zhongqi Executive C-class car design", "SUV design for Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor" and "Electric car design for State Key Lab", two questionnaires which are "Resear ch in SGMW Group" and "User research for SGMW", three experiments which are "Design cue experiment for SGMW", "Character surface extraction experiment" and "Experiment on the correlation of semantic and car styling factors", and field research in Europe including car museum and motor show.The main content and result of this research are as follow:1) Studying on the components of car styling surface. Deconstructing and reconstructing styling surface are accomplished from two angles: aesthetic types and internal hierarchy.Based on the field research in Europe, the paper proposes that the style of surface in different times is profoundly influenced by the aesthetic taste and technology factors, which results in different aesthetic of style. Meanwhile, the s ubtle relationship between surface and its reflective attribute generates another kind of aesthetic type. The paper concludes that the structure of styling surface consists of three key elements, which are contour shape, section shape, reflection and shado w shape.Then, the paper constructs catalogue hierarchy of styling surface by different classification criteria, each catalogue represents a certain type of cognition, which, essecntially, is based on the "line-surface" relation. By cognition experiment, the paper completes the extracting, clustering and representing of character surface and constructs its hierarchy.2) Studying on the two key attributes of styling surface: physical attributes and design attributes.The paper suggests that the physical attributes are the material form of styling surface and rely on surface data, which includes various types and multi-transforming relationship. While the design attributes refer to the "meaning" and associate with surface information, which closely related to decision-making information, user information and engineering information. Based on this, an attributes relational model is constructed.By case studies, the paper analyzes the expression and transformation of surface data and surface information within design process, and concludes that there are communication relation among design roles and transformation relation among data. Based on this, relational model, communication model and data transformation model are constructed. Also, the consistency problem of surface shaping is studied and collaboration model is proposed.3) Studying on the shaping process of styling surface. By analysis on the existing form and transformation form of styling surface, transformation rala tional models are proposed.The paper put forward that the transformation from semantic to shape of styling surface is accomplished in concept design phase; the "redesign" of surface is done in 2D rendering, and the digitizing and materializing are realize d in CAS modeling and physical modeling. The paper also proposes that designer and manager communicate by imagery semantics on the emotional character of surface, while digital modeler communicate with designer and engineer by operational sematic s and numerical semantics seperately, and construct the aesthetic feature of surface on the basis of geometry property. Clay modeler also uses operational sematics and focus on the aesthetic feature.Further, the paper proposes that the design problem-solving process can be regarded as a "line-surface" relationship processing process, and each solution is a set of "line-surface" relations. Then, the paper reconstructs the design workflow based on styling surface, and the workflow can be understood as a process from "expressing of emotion" to "following the parameter". Also, the whole workflow is wrapped by semantics and different roles use specific kind of vocabulary to communicate, which is needed from design to engineering.4) Studying on the brand "meaning" of styl ing surface. The paper analyzes the relationship between styling surface and automotive brand, and proposes the concept of brand "design cue", which can be classified into two kinds. The firs t one is visual cue, which corresponds to aesthetic feature and geometry property. The seconde on is semantic cue, which corresponds to emotional character. Based on the variation of these two kinds of cue, the paper proposes three brand design strateg ies, which are radical strategy, gradual strategy and incremental strategy.Committing to the research of car styling surface, this paper aims to get further understanding of the domain knowledge of car styling. Styling surface is a design object, while represents certain kind of design treatment and reflects relative desi gn thinking. The research on styling surface has both theoretical and practical significance to car styling.