Designworks opens new Studio in Santa Monica
4 min read
The brand new international design studio is near one of the vital essential and sophisticated mobility hubs on this planet, and within the coronary heart of “Silicon Seashore” – the trendsetting design, media, and expertise hotspot of Southern California.
From the official Press Launch:
The brand new studio, overlaying an space of about 16,500 sq. toes, is the most important of the three international Designworks studios together with places in Munich and Shanghai. The construction and tools of the every of those services assist the transformation from bodily to digital design and growth.
With a mission to form the way forward for mobility, Designworks’ new studio will draw inspiration from this atmosphere in its work on behalf of the BMW Group, and with purchasers from quite a few different industries starting from mobility and transportation to shopper electronics, charging infrastructure and inside areas.
As each a design studio and inventive assume tank Designworks identifies international developments and supplies inspiration within the fields of innovation, design, and sustainability.
Over the previous 50 years, Designworks’ capabilities and enterprise have expanded: from initially creating traditional clay fashions for automobile design to growing holistic mobility options that serve the entire ecosystem of city areas.
“Santa Monica is a take a look at mattress for the modern and sustainable mobility options of tomorrow,” says Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President, BMW Group Design and a former Head of Designworks. “Designworks will generate precious impetus, inspiration, and new concepts for the design of the BMW Group manufacturers proper right here.”
“Our new studio permits us to completely exploit the freedoms digitalization provides us,” stated the Head of Designworks, Holger Hampf. “Private interplay stays a focus, however we do work otherwise in Santa Monica: On this new workspace, our processes are geared in the direction of digital communication, and we’re in a position to convey the outcomes of our work to life for purchasers in a completely new method.
Integrating artwork and design to form the longer term
The mix of artwork and design has historically performed a serious function in BMW Group Design’s inventive work. “Artists and designers alike are ahead thinkers who query the established order, pace up the transformation and form the longer term,” says van Hooydonk, “– just like the artist Thomas Demand: He and I each share an intense curiosity in social and cultural developments that helps us assess how related our work is for the longer term.”
The extent to which artwork and design might be mutually inspiring was exemplified within the run-up to the presentation of the BMW Imaginative and prescient M NEXT in 2019.
Adrian van Hooydonk invited German artist and college lecturer Prof. Thomas Demand to {photograph} the Imaginative and prescient Automobile nicely prematurely of the official unveiling. Demand took detailed pictures of the BMW Imaginative and prescient M NEXT that captured the central concepts of the automobile in an inventive method, with out revealing the total design.
Designworks because the BMW Group’s inventive assume tank
As a BMW Group subsidiary, Designworks is concerned in lots of inside design tasks throughout the firm. Additional, the sharing of concepts and experience developed by way of the studio’s work with exterior purchasers from different sectors supplies an “outside-in” perspective which helps to tell and enrich the event of the corporate’s consumer centric method.
On this method, Designworks developed two modern seat research for the BMW model that mix sustainability with visionary design. In cooperation with start-ups, it is usually experimenting with utterly new manufacturing strategies and environmentally suitable, recyclable supplies, reminiscent of bacteria-based, plastic-free and non-animal textiles that give surfaces a high-quality appear and feel and supply excessive sturdiness.
The BMW M Hybrid V8 race automobile, which lately debuted on the 24 Hours of Daytona originated from Designworks. Its design combines conventional particulars with the expertise required for environment friendly efficiency on the racetrack.
The paintwork recollects the colours of traditional race automobiles and brings parts of 5 a long time of motorsports historical past into the current day.
For the latest Shopper Electronics Present (CES) in Las Vegas, Designworks created a particular app to accompany the presentation of the BMW i Imaginative and prescient Dee, a future-focused imaginative and prescient automobile that includes colour altering E Ink expertise.
The app allows customers to create a “digital twin” of the automobile in any colour or sample with their smartphone, and undertaking it nearly onto any background, demonstrating how the idea might stay in the actual and the digital worlds.
(Supply: BMW)
