Design Talks

New cars: BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé

2012-05-29T19:56:44Z

As consumers we are almost spoilt for choice when it comes to car buying – never in the history of the automobile has there been so many varieties on the market. Much of the new breed of models has been created with some of the new, and highly lucrative, markets in mind where customer needs and desires tend to be different to the more established ones.

This is where BMW’s new 6 Series Gran Coupé fits in – the marque’s first four-door coupé that sets out to combine the elegant and sporty appearance of a classic grand tourer with the added space and functionality offered by an executive saloon. This niche car will join the premium 6 Series family that currently includes the two-door Coupé and Convertible.

That Gran Coupé is based on Concept CS, shown to us at the Shanghai Motor Show in 2007. It was a handsome design that was promised as the 8 Series production car, plans for which were sadly axed in the economic recession. Keen to do something related to the CS, design director Adrian Van Hooydonk and his Munich team revisited the design years later concluding it as the Gran Coupé.

On the road this is a very handsome car, immediately capturing the main design cues of a classic grand tourer coupé – elongated bonnet and sweeping roofline. It is also a smooth operator as we were to discover when we drove the car from the BMW headquarters in Bracknell, to the heart of Champagne country, an overnight stop over at Reims, and up through glorious lush Alsace to Strasberg.

Suffering from a cold, I was impressed by how quite and comfortable the cabin was; the smooth chassis offering the steady ride of a grand tourer both on the motorway and through snaky mountain roads of Alsace.

It is also a practical car with a very spacious cabin that sits four adults comfortably. The wheelbase has been stretched so that it is 113mm longer than the 6 Series Coupé on which it is based. With the rear seats folded, the 460-litre luggage area expands to 1,265 litres. Even with four seats in use the boot will accommodate a couple of golf bags, while an optional through-loading hatch allows for a pairs of skis – for the impromptu sporting activity that is.

This being BMW, the car comes with a host of luxuries as standard, but you can also specify some extras such as a Bang & Olufsen sound system developed specially for the 6 Series. It creates a natural sound from 16 speakers distributed around the cabin. And put to the test, the sound quality is pretty outstanding.

The customer who requires even more personalisation can opt for BMW Individual, which is basically the equivalent of a personal shopper for your car so you can choose your own colour and trim combination in the cabin and mix up your own exterior paint. All this, off course, within limits.

The Gran Coupé is a niche car with BMW hoping to sell just 700 in the first year. Purists may frown but in the real world, and in the larger consumer market, some customers want to have the best of both worlds. Yet away from the marketing talk, there is genuinely something compelling in the idea of a coupé that marries this evocative, carefree sporty look with the practicalities of a larger car.

BMW isn’t alone in thinking up such a package. Audi’s A7 and Mercedes-Benz’s CLS, as well as Porsche’s Panamera and Aston Martin’s Rapide to some extent, also target the young-at-heart (and fairly well off) who’s lifestyle requires a more practical automobile layout – hence the four doors, roomy rear compartment and large boot.

This is something that no doubt customers in markets like China will be drawn to; but equally in Europe and especially in the US, the package will find admirers. After all this allows for a bit of frivolous fun, in an otherwise responsible adult.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

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Mad Men: Mid-Century Ads

2012-05-29T19:53:41Z

Our fascination with the slick, sexy and at times seedy world of advertising in the 50s and 60s has been noticeably heightened with the compulsive US television series Mad Men. Watching the handsome Don Draper oozing slickness on a film set – that has most of us mid-century design lovers oozing envy – is addictive viewing.

A new book has set out to celebrate the creative work of real life Don Drapers – ad men of the age of the ‘big idea’ who set out in selling us the American Dream. They succeeded in not only repackaging this seemingly perfect world for the optimistic post-war generation, but fundamentally alter how advertising communicates with the consumer.

Magazines of the period were flooded with clever campaigns selling everything from girdles to guns – images that paint a fascinating picture of not just patterns of consumption but society as a whole, giving insight into the zeitgeist of the period. They capture the spirit of the 50s and 60s, as concerns about the Cold War gave way to the carefree booze-and-cigarettes Mad Men era.

‘Mid-Century Ads: Advertising from the Mad Men Era’ by TASCHEN is as slick and handsome as the content it carries. With thousands of images, including a wide range of significant advertising campaigns from both eras, the two-volume book is visually a treat.

One of the ads featured is a seemingly innocent one that paved the way for modern advertising. This was ‘Think Small’, an ad campaign by agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) in the US for the Volkswagen Beetle. The German carmaker was finding the Beetle a tough sell across the Atlantic for the US consumers’ passion for larger, perhaps brasher cars.

Instead of bombarding their target audience with endless literature about the car, DDB built a campaign that focused entirely on the Beetle’s form – a tiny image of the Beetle appeared on an empty white space to emphasise the cars size, simplicity and minimalism and it was a huge success.

For Mid-Century Ads, the original images have been digitally enhanced to bring back the vivid colours and crisp fonts used at the time. Editor Jim Heimann, himself a cultural anthropologist and graphic design historian, has added words to enhance this rich journey back in time when slick suited ad men sold us a wallet full of coloured dreams.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

‘Mid-Century Ads: Advertising from the Mad Men Era’ is edited by Jim Heimann and published by TASCHEN

Order a copy here.

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Jerrycan inspires e-bike

2012-05-19T08:11:13Z

One+ is an intriguing concept. Vehicle designer Fernando Ocana has created a conceptual electric bike designed specifically to transport clean water from place to place in the developing world.

The lead designer at pioneering electric car company Think, Ocana’s design is an unusual electric motorcycle inspired by the simplicity of the bicycle so that it is simple to produce and easy to maintain.

He says he was inspired by locally available material such as the jerrycan which he notes is a ‘common approach for the developing-world scenario.’

Ocana used rough plastics in the construction to keep costs low and weight nimble. The overall shape works around the need for it to hold the water containers, which can be removed and replaced as users fill up their jerrycans.

The wheels are made of rubber to absorb any shocks and impacts. This is where the battery and engine are stored to meet the renewable energy capacity in the developing world.

Ocana says the idea for the in-wheel electric engine and batteries came as an attempt to match the intensive developments in solar and wind power that are taking place through developing regions such as Central Africa.

Ocana was sponsored by Japanese carmaker Honda through the ‘mobility for the masses’ project when he was completing his masters in vehicle design at the Royal College of Art in London.

For more visit his site.
Read our review of Monoform by Ocana.

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Exhibitions: Bauhaus Art as Life

2012-05-13T10:57:02Z

It is near impossible to be a designer in this day and age and not have been in one way or another influenced by the Bauhaus. The modern world’s most famous art school operated relatively briefly – between 1919 and 1933 – yet it changed the way we see, think and create. Bauhaus united art and technology, its utopian vision sought to change society in the aftermath of the First World War.

Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the school changed location in Germany from its first home in Weimar to Dessau and finally Berlin before its members were dispersed before the Second World War. Even after its avant-garde teachers and pupils had emigrated to Europe, the US and beyond, the Bauhaus style remained the most influential movement in design and architecture.

It seems completely fitting that the Barbican – itself a brilliant example of 60s utopian thinking – should host one of the most comprehensive, and exciting, exhibition in the UK in over 40 years.

Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the diverse artistic production which made up its turbulent fourteen-year history and delves into the subjects at the heart of the school: art, culture, life, politics and society, and the changing technology of the age. The exhibition features a rich array of painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and installation.

There are examples on display from teachers at the school including Josef and Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, László Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gunta Stölzl.

It features a host of workshops, talks, films and performances as well as the Bauhaus Summer School, an intensive two-week school held at the Barbican and led by leading practitioners from all artistic backgrounds. In short, this is an exhibition not to be missed by anyone interested in design.

Bauhaus: Art as Life  is at the Barbican in London, UK from 3 May to 12 August 2012 .
The exhibition in co-operation with Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

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Designer Talks: Tom Dixon

2012-05-09T06:23:33Z

Tom Dixon discusses the parallels between nationality and creativity at the 2012 Milan Furniture Fair. In the latest video from Nowness experts Carlo Lavagna and Roberto De Paolis the British industrial designer talks of his likes of Lee Broom, La Chance, and Noé Duchaufour Lawrence. Watch the video here.

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Colour One for Mini at Milan

2012-05-03T17:40:04Z

Colour One is the work of Dutch design duo Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings of Scholten & Baijings, created for Salone del Mobile 2012. It aims to explore the design of the Mini One, the marque’s base model, by dissecting the car – examining its composition. It draws on the familiar stylistic devices of Scholten & Baijings who deal mainly with colour and material.

Working with the Mini design team, the Dutch duo almost peeled the car, removing layers for a closer look at the individual components, adding colour and texture to the stripped parts.

The result is quite intriguing as these so called ‘art parts’ – components that were extracted as a whole – take on a very different personality once removed from the car.

The transparent tyres, for instance, in their deconstructed form are made of cast resin produced in cooperation with industrial designer and polyester specialist Vincent de Rijk. Or the seats and seatbelts have been lined with specially developed fabrics and recall the brand’s rally heritage.

The doors have been taken out and are displayed separately from the car with three-dimensional golden textures or a matt porcelain paint finish developed jointly with Mini.

Colour One was exhibited at Milan as part of the Interni Legacy exhibition at the University of Milan. See our report from last year here. Also read our reports on Salone del Mobile 2011.

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Twizy electric mobility pod

2012-04-28T12:25:15Z

The Twizy sets out to carve a new niche in personal mobility. Producer Renault refers to it as a ‘UDO’ as in unidentified driving object. Essentially a quadricycle, the diminutive hub is 2.34m long and 1.24m wide, can sit two and is available with or without doors.

An all-electric engine powers the car, which on the more powerful model of the two accelerates to 28mph in six seconds and offers a top speed of just over 50 miles.

The battery promises a 50-mile range in eco-mode and it takes 3.5 hours to fully charge. A bright blue wire extension fits neatly into the car’s nose and works with any household plug.

We drove the two models around Ibiza and it proved to be a rather fun companion on the roads of Europe’s party island. Read the full report published in Wallpaper*.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

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Salone del Mobile 2012 highlights

2012-04-26T19:25:14Z

The design world congregated on Milan last week for Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Europe’s leading design fair in Milan. To mark its 51^st year, the fair set its focus on technology and its influence on design. This is a vast show, spanning most of Milan with its hub at the exhibition centre in Rho. Read the report published in Wallpaper*.

We reported on the Heineken sponsored concept club design earlier. Plus read our reports from the 2011 Salone del Mobile here.

Watch the making of the Heineken pop up club

Salone Internazionale del Mobile will run 17-22 April.

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Technology as art: data.anatomy[civic]

2012-05-18T16:11:12Z

Finding beauty in complex mathematical data is essentially at the heart of one of the latest art/car collaborations. Japanese digital composer and artist Ryoji Ikeda has translated the entire data of the new Honda Civic into an audiovisual installation with intriguing results.

Exhibited at MUMA (Kraftwerk) on a bespoke 20-meter by 4-meter wall – the giant robust concrete warehouse in East Berlin admittedly adding to the theatrical drama – data.anatomy[civic] is a twelve-minute video art with sensual fast-moving imagery and hypnotic music. It is a visual and sensory treat.

The project started in early 2011 with development leader of the new Civic Mitsuru Kariya allowing Ikeda complete access to the CAD data of the car. ‘This information is confidential and top secret like a CIA file,’ muses the artist following the screening, ‘and we felt huge responsibility.’

Then came the difficult task of translating it all into visual and audio form. ‘When I saw the data I felt like a microcosm – it is so detailed,’ he says. It took around 3000 engineers over four years to create this. ‘And I had to respect what they do.’

Working with his team at the studios in Paris and Tokyo, Ikeda analysed the data and began to compose his work. ‘A Civic consists of thousands and thousands of tiny parts,’ he says. ‘It is like a human – there are so many organs in it – and that inspired me.’

Asked if the sound triggered the music or the music the sound, Ikeda notes that the process was essentially democratic. ‘The colours, frequencies, music – all come together. It is mostly a mathematical operation.’ Honda’s Kariya later remarked that he could almost see the engineers and designers involved in the project in Ikeda’s installation.

Ikeda’s compositions often involve visualising complex data – subject matters have included NASA – although with Honda the process was more complex. He explains: ‘It was the little things – the tyre, the wing all three-dimensional figures - having to translate all this data into my computer language first.’

He insists he worked with the entire data and took almost a crash course in car construction. ‘I knew what the data meant,’ he assures me. ‘You are watching entire parts but the frame set is so fast your brain cannot make them out.’ Every single part is used in the installation.

Ikeda believes data can be beautiful. ‘It is pure information. This is very abstract – a pure mathematical model,’ he adds.

He admits that the Honda team have created a substantial and functional product. ‘I’m making art, which is useless, but to be enjoyed. You can’t find meaning. You can say its enjoyable, boring or whatever – it is just art.’

But why work with data? ‘This is very contemporary technology and I am doing contemporary art,’ says Ikeda, before adding: ‘I’m not doing paintings and it is very natural to use this technology.’

Commerce will always be flirting with art. In many ways they need each other to survive – one for creative recognition, the other simply to survive.

In the case of data.anatomy[civic] and others that we’ve reported on – light designer Paul Cocksedge’s collaborative lamp with BMW Sestoseno shown at Milan last year and the Mini-sponsored sculpture this year – the viewer almost needs to eliminate the sponsor and judge the work in isolation.

In this context Ikeda’s installation is a simple celebration of the intricacy and complexity of car making – of technology and of aesthetics where data almost becomes alchemy.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks

data.anatomy[civic] is on at MUMA (Kraftwerk), Berlin until 1 May 2012. For more information visit here.

Gerry McGovern on Land Rover design

2012-04-14T09:07:44Z

Jaguar Land Rover is having a bit of a renaissance. Owned by Tata Motors since 2008, the Indian firm is breathing life back into the two brands, encouraging them to explore their identities within the context of 21^st century aesthetic and functional needs.

Land Rover, in particular, has revealed an edgier side to its personality in recent years with cars like the Range Rover Evoque which has been an incredible success story for the company.

Designed to seduce young female buyers and tease customers from markets where there is less brand awareness, the car has brought 80% new customers to the marque. Back in March, at the Geneva Motor Show, Land Rover unveiled the Evoque Convertible concept – the same car minus a roof.

The firm also revealed another concept at the show. The DC100 is the marque’s vision for a modern Defender – a tricky car to redesign given its almost cult status amongst loyal customers who include the Queen.

We caught up with Land Rover design director Gerry McGovern at the show to find out more.

Design Talks. Why did you decide on the Evoque Convertible concept?

Gerry McGovern. This is a natural progression for Evoque. The car has been incredibly successful for us, not just in terms of sales but building brand momentum, relevance and global recognition. This concept is another twist on it really; I’d argue it is a natural progression and has a lot of appeal.

DT. Can you talk us through some of the design decisions?

GM. Generally convertibles tend to be quite parallel to the ground in terms of waistline – we had to make a decision to do this or work with the actual design of the Evoque, which is very dramatic.

So we came off the waistline and let is naturally progress round the back which gives you a back end that is higher than you would normally get on a convertible. However, this is not an ordinary convertible, it is a 4×4 for a start, it is also a Range Rover, so a luxury vehicle.

DT. How closely will a possible production car follow this design?

GM. There is still more refinements to be done but I do think it lends itself beautifully to open road motoring in a Range Rover which we haven’t seen before. We’ve seen it in Land Rover Defenders in a functional sense but not in this context.

DT. Do you see the car going into production?

GM. Depending on the reaction at the show it will give us the impetus to put it into production.

I would look to simplifying it a little – the feature line that is there for the hood mechanism, I’d like to see that hidden, more integrated. It will take some clever packaging but we can do that.

DT. The Defender is arguably Land Rover’s most iconic model. This is a real-life off-roader and its design to date has heavily reflected the car’s functionality. Why challenge this with the DC100?

GM. We haven’t done a Defender for 60 years, so why on earth would we try to replica a vehicle that looks 60 years old. The traditionalists would say we’ve gone far too far.

But, the manufacturing techniques for creating this vehicle are outmoded and it’s not a modern package so it is not legal in certain markets. The look is a pure consequence of its function and manufacturing and tooling at the time – pure form follows function. The world has moved on.

DT. The Defender has to be highly functional. How have you achieved this in the cabin?

GM. Inside is very elemental using durable material that is very functional – you can hose it out – but in a modern, robust way. It has floating seats as well as a central foldable one for your dog! This vehicle has to be very capable – you can kick the hell out of it and it’ll get up for more.

DT. Do you see this car entering production?

GM. Our design DNA is simple but to develop a modern day version is very complex. There is still more work to be done and on this particular design we will look at alternatives but the essence of what we have here is the right positioning to start.

DT. Land Rover is in the process of designing a whole new generation of vehicles and this includes replacing the ones that are at the end of their cycles. Tell us more.

GM. We are looking at where there are opportunities like with the Evoque to stretch the brand. Fundamental to the car is its design. Design has been around with Land Rover but it has usually played second bat to functionalism; this isn’t the case anymore. Design is now on an equal footing with engineering and that’s where it needs to be in a world where design is a fundamental differentiator.

Nargess Shahmanesh Banks