Innehållsförteckning för No. 246 från AUTO & DESIGN

So simple, so ingenious. The physical dimension of DigiPHY, an automotive design tool patented by the style centre Granstudio, is limited to a floor, a steering wheel, four independent seats, and two boxes that contain the technical components. The virtual one, in contrast, seems to have very few limits: “With this tool, we are able to cover 95% of the existing architectures thanks to its extreme modularity and the synergistic work with virtual reality”, says Lowie Vermeersch, CEO and Founder of Granstudio. Depending on the specifics of the project, DigiPHY is raised, lowered, lengthened, or shortened: “Once they’ve put on the visor, the designers can display and modify their project however they like in real time”, saving time and replacing physical modelling with this process. To make the virtual experience…

With its unique silhouette, explicitly designed around the identical front and rear panels, the Ami immediately conveys an idea of exceptional empathy. And yet the latest Citroën creation, originally approved as a light quadricycle that can be driven by 14-year-olds (in France), slots firmly into the space between ecology and new mobility needs that today is more than ever structural for many generalist manufacturers: "More than a car in the true sense of the word, we have designed the solution to a series of problems", reflects Pierre Leclercq, head of Citroën design. If urban congestion leads to car sharing in order to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, electric vehicles would appear to have become an imperative and the economic crisis could hit the post-Covid situation savagely, the…

In the abstract, it could prove to be one of the most daring and significant operations of the recent history of the car: launching a new brand in the demanding European market through special hiring formulas, with a duration that can be changed every month, and with the chance to share the vehicle with other users. Thus, in line with the Chinese-Swedish Lynk&Co’s aims, the dematerialisation of possession would become structural to the offering and would extend across the whole range of products, from the three-volumes to the sports cars. The first experimental piece of the strategy is planned for next spring and, although it’s an SUV that is 4.5 metres long, it will be called 01 because the models are numbered in their order of release, not according to…

From brightness to the “flame”, from the grain to opaque or ceramic effects: none of the multiple features of a shade just presented escapes the precise gaze of experts, even if spread on just a few samples of metal sheet in preparation for the bumpy road to production. How could a similar kaleidoscope be recreated during the lockdown that froze Italy - and the world - in the spring of 2020? The impossibility of physical meetings compromised the setup that researchers for paint giant PPG would have prepared, like every two years, to show its offering to the FCA Style Centre in real life. “Luckily, to simplify organisation and travelling, we had already started developing a virtual model that made it possible to observe the qualities of the products on…

This year’s health emergency has stalled events in many sectors, and the automotive and design industries have been no exceptions. The easy way out would therefore have been for Berman to postpone the 17th Autostyle Design Competition until 2021, given all the problems involved in organising not only the competition for young design school students, but also the exhibition of the latest developments and the design conferences in the customary technical and convivial atmosphere that prevails in Mantua and environs every year. Prof. Roberto Artioli, proprietor of the Italian components company and the passionate promoter of the event, chose instead to use technology to keep Autostyle afloat. So not so much a virtual show of cars, it became an intriguing reversal of perspective: no longer designers in Mantua, but spectators…

Designing a model’s open-air variant has always been a complex challenge for designers. It’s not simply a question of making the upper part of the bodywork disappear, but new stylistic, aerodynamic and technical factors also become part of the equation. And when it comes to Ferrari, the game gets even more interesting. "In designing the SF90, the first hybrid Ferrari in history, we knew we would have to consider two variants, coupé and spider", explains Flavio Manzoni, Ferrari’s design chief. "This gave rise to the idea of developing a cabin in a very forward position with a fully retractable roof for the spider version". Styling and engineering worked in synergy to achieve a beautiful, high-performance car. One of the Style Centre’s aims was to be able to show the engine,…

Imagine a Mini. It’ll be a nice memory, because the only features it shares with that of the future will be the position of the wheels, at the four corners, and its footprint, i.e., its track on the road (it will be 4.46 metres long). It won’t be a simple car, according to the head of design for Mini, Oliver Heilmer, but “a space that adapts to your needs, which will make you feel at home”. It’ll be many years before it becomes a reality, though. To start with, the Mini Vision Urbanaut - a name that makes you think of an urban astronaut - is an electric concept at the purest level, in the sense that it is a virtual exercise that no model, much less a prototype, has…

Liberate your imagination and go back to having fun designing racing cars. "For years now, the stringent regulations imposed by the various racing car formulas have meant almost total stylistic uniformity for participating cars, thus limiting any new ideas designers and planners might have". Luciano D'Ambrosio, founder of LDA Design style centre, therefore issued a challenge to his team’s creatives: imagine a vehicle with innovative styling solutions for motor racing. "The opportunity came during the coronavirus lockdown, a time when we had more time to reflect on out-of-the-box projects", explains D'Ambrosio. The idea came instantly: "Design an SUV for Le Mans. It started out as a game, but then the challenge got really serious". The thought may seem bizarre, but it is not as far from reality as we might…

Ten years ago, childhood friends Fabio de Silva and Carlo Borromeo, technology and design enthusiasts and especially passionate about cars, founded the studio that bears their name, combining their respective strengths and passions. Fabio followed a vocation that had been part of his upbringing through the work of his father Walter de Silva, celebrated car designer who passed on his creative passion, so much so that when he was not yet thirty he directed a first graphic and industrial design studio for eight years. Carlo was trained as a designer and worked at the Seat Style Centre and Italdesign with Giorgetto Giugiaro, cultivating a personal propensity for art direction. "It began as an adventure between friends", de Silva and Borromeo tell us, "and now we are involved in automotive and…

Leading edge technology and hallmark design: this is the combination that has established Dyson worldwide as a benchmark in the household appliances market, from an aesthetic and formal perspective also. Like Braun several decades ago, in fact, the British company has accorded design a key role in the development of its products, which not surprisingly have found many imitators among its competitors. Since 2005, through the James Dyson Award, the company has contributed to the development of more than two hundred and fifty ground-breaking inventions with the aim of demonstrating the power of engineers to change the world. In addition to this award, the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology and the James Dyson Foundation encourage young engineers and engineering students to apply their knowledge to the development of solutions…

“The world of car design will never be like it was before”: Lowie Vermeersch, founder and CEO of the Turin design house Granstudio, has no doubts that the design approach must change. “The new possibilities in the field of technology and new ways of using the car require that we go beyond the traditional focus on the geometry of physical shapes, fully integrating the intangible aspects of design into our creative thought”, Vermeersch says. “Interaction, movement, light, sound, smell. We have to work with all the senses, to create a design that touches us in a holistic way. This requires a reset of the stylistic process: we need to put the human experience at the centre and consider the design of the User Experience as an integral part of the…

Said, done. Vision iNext, the concept car unveiled by BMW in Los Angeles in 2018, becomes the iX, a production car designed for all-electric mobility and the first model based on the new modular technology platform dedicated to this type of propulsion. All this a year ahead of the market launch originally planned for the end of 2021, and with content that even surpasses that experimented on the concept car, as BMW Group Design Director Adrian van Hooydonk explained at the iX’s world premiere last November. "We were able to keep most of the concepts in the production car, even taking them to a more advanced stage in certain cases", he tells us during the online interview. "For example, on the Vision iNext there were two separate flat screens, whereas…

Few things are more exciting to a designer than a brand new automotive architecture: A blank canvas that opens the mind and unlocks creativity. That freedom inspired Renault’s design teams responsible for the look of the automaker’s future electric vehicles, and led to the Mégane eVision show car – far more than a concept, it is very close to the production version due at the end of 2021. The Mégane eVision is the first concrete expression for Renault of the CMF-EV platform, jointly developed with alliance partner Nissan for compact and midsize electric vehicles. It is designed to capture all the benefits of an electric vehicle, with a flat, low floor; wheels pushed to the corners; and short front and rear overhangs. As a bonus, the smaller size of an…

Every day, the world of “one-offs” teaches us that there is, practically, no limit to luxury and to what might be desired. The Palladium project, however, has severely tested even this cliché. Not because it is more luxurious than many other special creations, but because it represents a difficult meeting between two types of car that are very different from each other. It takes its cue from a powerful American pick-up, the RAM 1500 to be exact, on top of which it has been draped in an extra-luxurious sedan or “hyper-limousine”, as it has been defined. This difficult alchemy was created on behalf of and according to a specific request from Aznom, the Monza-based company specialising in customising interiors, by Camal Studio. The latter is a Turin workshop with specific…

A competition for imagining the Polestars of the future: “This time we expanded our boundaries and asked all the creatives to design a Polestar-brand vehicle that would go into production twenty years from now and that wouldn’t necessarily be a car”. Maximillian Missoni, head of design for Polestar, comments, with satisfaction, on the results of the style competition in which students and professional designers participated, from 23 June to 26 October 2020, with projects inspired by the theme of formal purity. The proposals arrived from all over the world, from India to South Korea, from Japan to Germany, from China to the US, and they concerned the most disparate projects: from the most classic, zero-emissions hypercars to vehicles for exploring the arctic regions, to water motorbikes. “The designers produced the…

Omri Revesz Interior Design Professor, Department of “Culture del Progetto”, IUAV University of Venice Docente di Interior Design, Dipartimento di Culture del Progetto, IUAV Università di Venezia In the 1980s, with the explosion of Internet use, there was a widespread idea that distance would lose its significance. In terms of work, entertainment and relationships, it was thought that, with the possibility of connection, distance would no longer matter. Today, the opposite seems to be true. In fact, in the last twenty years, although they have the possibility, people are not moving to remote and rural places, but rather migrating to the cities. It seems that the theorists of the 1980s overlooked a crucial element of human experience: the importance of physical interaction between people. The three-year thesis workshop of the…