u/iamBulaier

Zak Efron bought 128 hectares of tropical paradise on the Australian east coast in 2021, and views of the Eco home designed by Joost Bakker (the Eco design specialist, activist, florist) he's building are being shared around.

Joost Bakker gained profile when he built a concept pavilion on the brilliant Federation Square site in Melbourne, where he designed a steel structured, corrugated zinc/aluminum clad structure draped in planting that supplies fresh food "off the vine".

I tend to be skeptical - it looks like a lot of structure processed in big corporation owned factories with little connection to handmade, and.... Not everyone (including me) wants to live in a shaggy jungle overgrown home.

The "look" is funky and hip - good to look at and built to weather as an enduring "bunker" to survive the environment and encroaching typical greenery - kinda Eco Brutalism. Lots of hemp based components - Baaker likes to say he designs :

"Why build houses, when you can build ecosystems?",

"A house should be providing you with energy and food and shelter. Your life becomes much richer when you live in an ecosystem and in a food system. I think in the future, we'll all live like this."

The couple of renderings that have been down make it look... Dowdy.

Hi team, again I tried the version with Sprite. My pot is too small I realized cooking 9 fat drumsticks so I was battling that.

I combined a few recipes. Some said add the vinegar last, some said early on so I wasn't too precise with how I made it figuring it's probably made a thousand different ways in the Philippines even. The sauce was probably too watery, so I removed the chicken and boiled down the sauce a little and added potatoes as one recipe said to do.

My father rarely says he likes the food - silence is default approval but he gave it the thumbs up. 😁

Just thought I'd let you all know 👍

Today my Cantonese buddy in Guangzhou sent a photo of a car, so I took a look and first thought it's "weird looking Tesla", then looking at the brand it said Stelanto. So I asked him is it a Chinese brand copying Tesla and using the brand Stellantis? My friend replied with a Mr.Bean looking sneaky sticker...

It reminded me of the first Huawei Aito M5. First time I saw that I was similarly puzzled wondering if it was some kind of obscure (frumpified) Porsche Macan, so I did a search - "Huawei SUV Porsche copy" and I found other results showing a Huawei/SAIC collaboration that is an even more faithful copy of the Porsche Taycan than the Xiaomi S7.

I'm pretty surprised, because with the Chinese cars now flooding the world auto markets and (you'd think) trying to build credibility and shrugging off old stereotypes, that the days of China producing flatout copies like the Landwind that copied the first-generation Range Rover Evoque exactly, would be in the past when China was first learning about car styling.

It's... Wild, one of Chinas largest companies, supported by China as a national champion shamelessly copying a foreign brand. Is there any other way to see that than, Huawei having absolutely no integrity?... (And how does this reflect on China?)

Numbered the sequence so my friends here can follow

*Edit - I find it interesting that there's no comments, no up or downvotes... but this post has been shared 5 times up to now 🇨🇳

The screenshots explain what's going on...

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When the BYD ship arrived in Melbourne, their sub was full of laughably excited posts from people with no Reddit history telling how they're trembling with excitement that their car has arrived in Melbourne.

What's it called? The BYD "Fangcheng" sedan the Chinese writers are hailing it as the solution to BYDs often criticized styling woes - while not even the Chinese public are fooled. It's immediately recognizable as a Porsche Panamera copy with Lamborghini Huracan headlights and alteration of Bentley rear eyes doubled as is the European fashion now.

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Xiaomi was heavily criticized in China for copying the Porsche Taycan shape and putting the iconic McLaren single horizontal LED into the headlight, and still they sold a million, so it seems it's a good business strategy that BYD has learnt from.

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Pity that in Reddit, photos won't upload in order...

Luce... No one hates the interior. I don't but I mean - it's Land Rover - not Ferrari.

I guess the question is - Ferrari, is it about passion or cerebral rationality?

I agree with the former CEO - love the brand as much as anyone - but if you're going to keep saying it's great...

From Chinese social media

It's lucky that as designers, we get to use our brain and consider a design from not only the initial visual sensation but try to analyze and understand why the resultant look appeals or doesn't. Having started with the Ferrari sub and cardesign sub, I pretty quickly got the feel of how the average Joe and Joan feel (or maybe being Reddit how the average low brow Joe and Joan react to the Luce). So yeah, I jumped over to you tube. Watched 3 videos, the last being Cleo Abram talking to Jony Ive and Ferrari chief designer Flavio Manzoni.

So, Ive talked - I was wondering if he's suffering from the early signs of advanced age. Manzoni talked a lot of very coherent ideas. But you always think, what do you really think. For me, it's the old elephant in the room. The car really misses the mark. Ive talks about authenticity being at the heart of their approach and for me the car is inauthentic. It's Ive and Newson over intellectualizing... "How do we engineer cleverly the essence of Ferrari into the car?". "Echoing the tail lights off traditional Ferraris", "look how the yellow of the electronic key when inserted into the console moves to the instrument cluster". It's too cerebral and lost any emotive essence of Ferrari.

When Newson did his Ford concept, it was pretty much a fail. I saw an interview with the Gerry McGovern who directed the design of Range Rover Defender and he'd said when talking to Marc Newson, Newson had asked "how do you design a car". Really puzzled about how he should approach the task. His best work has always been designs that he had a creative inspiration and a simple solution. The Luce is engineered simplicity but not aesthetically pleasing and without that inspiration - the 2 juxtaposed shapes are only an interesting idea.

Strange, the car is so massive and 60 inches high, Ferrari know what a good looking SUV looks like (Purosangue), Porsche Taycan made EV look sensational - Ferrari had that precedent.

The Luce has all the evocative, passion of Ferrari taken out and an uninspiring over cleverness instead engineered in. It looks heavy. The gaping "mouth" could be fish like, instead it's duck bill like.

For me, the movie Tron understood how EVs could be. Fast, dynamic, metaphorically "electric", immersive in the buzz of future tech.

That's my opinion and my question - designers thoughts?

*Edit. I just checked to see what Chinese social media is saying, best comment goes to "is this to prevent Xiaomi from copying?

I just got an old 2018 iMac today. I'm wanting to download blender and rhino. The connecting to start downloading is taking a loooooong time - like an hour already. I asked AI, it had some ideas but finding my way around Mac OS is a pain.

Any ideas why it's so slow and any ideas how to solve that issue?

I thought the body kit on Lancia deltas make a fairly boxy shape into a pugnacious, eye catching classic, and that treatment would look good on the utilitarian series 200 Toyota Hiace LWB

Saw this machine for sale in Australia

As my friend said - it's like a Your favorite toy walk into the reality.