Table of contents for No. 167 in AUTO & DESIGN

A design competition organised by a carmaker which, however, does not involve designing cars. Citroën has posed a new challenge to designers from all over the world, creating new ground for creativity in which the automobile is not an end in itself but a starting point from which to explore new horizons. The competition, conducted in collaboration with the website www.aedoto.com and accessible exclusively online, calls upon participants to choose any one of approximately one hundred mechanical and bodywork components of Citroën models as a basis for the creation of an object that has nothing to do with the original car. “Combine, connect, create” is the theme of the competition, in which elements such as door handles, mud flaps, windscreen wipers, pistons and countless other car parts will be transformed…

In the best spirit of advanced concept principles, Citroën stood out from the crowd at the last Frankfurt Internationale Automobil Ausstellung with a true vision for the future, baptised C-Cactus. Not only did its shape surprise with fresh ideas, the conceptual content was also surprisingly innovative. All the ingredients of a future car concept were packaged in a diesel-hybrid driven car of the lower middle class, say the Citroën C4. The use of lesser parts for weight saving and easier assembly, made out of recyclable materials, seemed to blend in perfect harmony with a design that breaks away from today’s state of the art. So meet the car that stares at you like a friendly, faithful bulldog, with a spacious interior that does without a dashboard and expresses a natural…

Slimmer, less bulky seats, seats that fold, stow away or deploy to suit transport and load carrying needs and completely virtual instruments and controls. These are just some of the projects by Johnson Controls, an automotive supplier with its own design centres in North America and Europe, the latter of which headed by vice president Han Hendricks. All of these working prototypes by Johnson Controls have been developed on the basis of research into target groups conducted to understand what customers actually want. Interaction with electronics is now a daily reality for a large proportion of users. And so a TFT monitor with a resolution of 320x240 pixels is no longer a futuristic object but a viable alternative to conventional instrumentation, while also reducing the weight of the component installed…

A lab to test new ideas? Undoubtedly. A glimpse of what’s already being developed behind closed doors, in spite of Peugeot’s claims to the contrary? Perhaps. The 308 RC Z however, one of the most interesting concept cars at the Frankfurt Motor Show has higher aspirations. “It marks a profound change in our style”, claims Jérôme Gallix, who goes even further, saying that “it marks the start of a new direction”. “Soon”, he explains, “some of these styling cues will begin to appear in production models.” This July 1, Gallix definitively took over the reins of Peugeot design from Gérard Welter, after working together with him for years (he was responsible for the 207 CC, for example). This stunning 2+2 coupé concept – all the more attractive for being derived…

Arne Quinze is a Belgian designer and publisher who founded the company Quinze & Milan in 1999, and who works on every aspect of a project from beginning to end. For example, he recently conceived an exhibition space for his creations, which touch on fields as diverse as furniture design, architecture and artistic installations, conjuring up a whole world of futuristic, interactive objects capable of changing and mutating like the nature from which they draw their inspiration. “To listen, touch and look with curiosity”, says Quinze, are imperatives, and it is not by chance that the designer imbues his coloured, transformable creations with their own expressiveness. His objects may be used either individually or together, forming landscapes in which to live, such as Matrass, a system of polyurethane stuffed seats…

For some, being different can actually become a fashion, dictated more often than not by clever marketing or advertising. For Mazda, however, non-conformism is an authentic design philosophy. While other carmakers are building increasingly heavy models, the Mazda 2 (design story in A&D 166) is almost a hundred kilos lighter than its predecessor, and while other cars are becoming longer and wider, the new small Mazda is 4 centimetres shorter. These choices translate into tangible benefits: as reducing weight has also cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The 75 bhp 1.3 petrol version we test drove also proved to be quicker off the mark, with significantly better overall performance than the previous version, whereas combined cycle fuel consumption figures never exceeded 5.5 litres per 100 km even when driven with…

A genuine sports legend, with six world rally championships under its belt, the Subaru Impreza enters its third generation with a decidedly different image. The non-conformist style of the previous generations (in saloon and Compact Wagon versions) has been dropped in favour of a more conventional five door hatchback body shape tailored to appeal to the European market. The new Impreza was developed in Japan on the platform of the Legacy. The new version is slightly shorter than its predecessor (4415 mm instead of 4465), but boasts a 95 mm longer wheelbase (2620 mm) for improved interior space. In spite of the new hatchback shape, the front expresses a strong brand identity, with a low, drooping bonnet, eagle eye headlights and trapezoid air intakes. Alternating highlights and shadows contribute to…

“It’s so simple, it’s almost difficult to describe” begins Walter de’ Silva, director general for design for the Volkswagen Group, as he introduces the new A4, presented at Frankfurt this September. The A4 is the very symbol of Audi’s success over the past ten years, and the third generation of the car strikes a perfect balance in form, substance and size. “It’s dynamic but not aggressive, sporty but not overstated. I have always believed that surfaces must be given room to breathe, and this car is a tangible demonstration of what this means. It is light and shadow that count, not a mass of lines to give the impression of a complex, intricate design. Designers today are shedding excessive decoration and affected exaggeration, there is a return en masse to…

Do you remember the 1980s, when the first thing they mentioned when launching a new car was its Cd? Achieving the lowest possible drag coefficient was something to boast about and the figure was listed even before top speed and maximum power. Exactly the same thing is happening today with another parameter – this time CO2 emissions in grams per kilometre. As proof of this, Frankfurt this year provided the stage for a veritable contest between carmakers, with each trying to outdo the others with record breaking figures. All these efforts to improve the ecological performance of cars, however, have not been matched by a corresponding revolution in appearance. In spite of the fact that all prototypes today are inevitably hybrids, the car itself continues to look the same as…

The German company Mercedes-Benz makes very few pure concept cars, and when it does, it is to express new technology more than stylistic trends. While the Bionic car and the F600 concept seen in 2005 were, respectively, a study in aerodynamics inspired by nature and an exploration into the future of fuel cells, the F700 unveiled on the three-pointed star’s stand at Frankfurt is much closer to today’s reality and explores two aspects in particular of the current state of the art. The first of these aspects is the interior, which the majority of designers today believe offers much more scope for creativity and innovation than exterior design. The second is an ecological, or at least less polluting, aspect that carmakers are now trying to extend into even the most…

Over the past decade, the bicycle has gone through some radical changes. In particular, there has been an increasingly frequent transfer of technology and configurations from competition cycles to general purpose models, such as the widespread use of carbon fibre, for instance, and this has also contributed to the development of completely new types of two wheeled vehicle. Just think, for example, how the mountain bike, created in the mid-1980s as a new, sturdy off-road tool, has since become a means of getting round the city. Cinelli was founded in 1941 by Cino Cinelli as a manufacturer of frames and handlebars, and has been working together with Columbus – a state of the art producer of metal tubing established in the 1930s – since the late 1970s. Over the years,…

A vertical space with 1200 m2 of floor area on the world’s most famous avenue, in the heart of the city that symbolises the brand itself. On September 25, Citroën inaugurated C-42, a window on the present but also a place to discover the past, at the legendary number 42 in Avenue des Champs-Elysées, in Paris. The address is legendary because it was right here that in 1927, André Citroën personally inaugurated the first space dedicated to exhibiting the new products of the double chevron, in what was an astonishing and bold building at the time. In the 80 years since then, everything has changed, but not the bond between the brand and the city, and the new building is living testimony to this. Designed by the French architect Manuelle…

As all the entries in the competition were created using their tools, it was natural that the French company Dassault Systèmes, the world leader in the field of digital design support systems, felt directly involved in the initiative. Gianluca Gonella, managing director of Dassault Systèmes Italia, describes the role played by the producer of the Catia design environment in the Autostyle 2007 competition (see previous pages). “Berman has been a client of ours for years and their initiative complements the spirit and philosophy of our activities perfectly. Acknowledging young designers is important for highlighting the role that our systems play in facilitating their work. Last year, we already created an award for young designers using Catia to create projects of particular ecological merit or using recyclable elements. During a meeting…

Developed by a team headed by Bryan Nesbitt – GM Europe design director from 2004 to 2007 and currently vice president of design for North America – the HHR is a reinterpretation of the legendary Chevrolet Suburban van from 1949 and is a natural rival to the Chrysler PT Cruiser, with which it shares the same basic layout. The car measures just under 4.5 metres in length, 1.7 in width and stands an impressive 1.6 metres tall – so it comes as no surprise that its name stands for Heritage High Roof. The car is built in Mexico on the platform of the Chevrolet Cobalt and has been on sale in the US since 2005. It is scheduled for launch in Italy early next year with a 2.4 litre, 4…

As could be seen at the recent Frankfurt Motor Show, the global motor industry is focusing increasingly on the development and application of technologies, in production models, intended to curb the damage sustained by the environment over recent decades. Design studios all over the world have long encouraged their students to address these issues, but this year the Institute of Applied Art and Design in Turin went a step further, exhibiting its environmentally friendly projects for the brands Piaggio and Volkswagen – evocatively entitled “Green Wheels” – at the Autoeco ecological transportation show in Turin this September. Specifically, the project conducted in collaboration with Volkswagen explores the theme of sustainable mobility in a study for a compact city car. The German marque has already expressed its interest in just such…

This year’s 40th edition of the Tokyo Motor Show, which has always been about weird concept cars and down-to-earth production models, had less to offer than usual, especially in terms of non-Japanese debuts. The only exceptions were from the Volkswagen Group, which brought not one but two all-new concepts to the show. The Space Up!, which is the second rear-engined compact prototype after the Up! unveiled at Frankfurt, and the Metroproject Quattro, which previews the future baby of the Audi range, the A1. There were very few courageous or at least truly innovative Japanese proposals. Mazda stood out from the crowd with the Taiki two-seater sports car, primarily a study into forms modelled by aerodynamics and the fourth chapter in the styling exercise that has already spawned the Nagare, Ryuga…

“This isn’t just an additional model to the 1 Series range, we’ve been planning the Coupé since the start”, begins a straight-talking Chris Bangle at the unveiling of the new sports model at Frankfurt. “This is an important car. The very concept of the 1 Series was originally derived from a coupé concept – just ask Adrian.” By whom he obviously means BMW brand design director Adrian van Hooydonk, who confirms the group’s chief of design’s claim. “Yes, right from the definition of the 1 Series, a three-box coupé was already on the cards. It had to have an evident boot distinguishing it from the fastback three-door, which is built on the same architecture as the five-door.” A style model for a three-box version was also produced during the early…

Opel created the Flextreme prototype (in the photos) on General Motors’ E-Flex platform. The car features a diesel-electric powertrain and numerous innovative solutions for the doors, seats and load capability. Measuring approximately 4.8 m in length, the car explores a possible multi-role future for the family hatchback, as design vice president for GM Europe Mark Adams explains. “It’s a monocab design, but not according to the old MPV concept. It is very aerodynamic. The driving position is raised, as in SUVs, which are also undergoing transformation because they need to become more efficient, as nobody accepts big heavy cars any more. Customers are becoming increasingly demanding – they want it all: style, practicality and reliability. We realise that we’re working towards a target that is constantly changing.” While there are…

There has been growing interest in the work of young home grown designers in Italy recently, fuelled not just by publications, exhibitions and independent self-promotional initiatives, but also by manufacturers. After the Coop in 2005, now another large historic retail chain is following this path. The project, promoted by the department store chain Coin and organised by Cristina Morozzi, was originally conceived by Elio Fiorucci and Stefano Beraldo as an initiative to highlight the work of a group of young Italian designers. The idea was to design objects for the home that were innovative, functional and suitable for mass production, and materials, style and cost effectiveness were key factors in achieving this goal. The collection currently on sale in department stores consists of 28 items created by 19 young designers…

A Panda with asymmetrical surfaces, a Lancia for the city designed “to cut through traffic like a knife” and an Alfa Romeo inspired by the enchanting forms of the cobra. These fresh, spontaneous and exuberant interpretations of a car for the near future were conceived by the participants in the Design the Italian Way course inaugurated by Fiat Group Automobiles on November 30, 2006 to stimulate creativity among young car design students. Eight of the world’s most important car design institutes were involved in the initiative: the Detroit College for Creative Studies, the Coventry University of Art and Design, Tokyo Communications Arts, the Stroganov State University in Moscow, the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad (India), the Umea University Institute of Design (Sweden) and, representing Italy, the European Institute of…

A single model becomes a range in its own right. After the 5 door hatchback presented at the beginning of the year and the recently launched Sporty Wagon, the 3 door sports version is scheduled to reach the marketplace in early 2008. On top of all this is the cabriolet, due to arrive at the beginning of 2009. These are all versions of the Kia Cee’d, the Korean manufacturer’s most European C segment model. Kia is expanding its activities in the Old Continent, with the new Zilina plant in Slovakia, inaugurated a few months ago (where the Cee’d is built), and a new European headquarters in Frankfurt, which also includes a design centre. The Sporty Wagon was developed on the base of the hatchback as part of the same project,…

The styling exercise proposed by Professor Davor Spoljaric, a designer lecturing at the Lathi Polytechnic Design Institute in Finland, challenged the skills of his second year students of industrial design. The students were given just five and a half non-consecutive days (one every week) to define the exterior design for agricultural machinery for the year 2015. This test put the abilities of the students to get straight to the point with concrete solutions to the test. “The idea”, explains Professor Spoljaric, “came from my own personal experience. About 20 years ago, I ended up working for a tractor manufacturer and I came up against the extremely conservative spirit of this particular sector. I think that the situation is still the same today and I continue to believe that with the…