Designworks opens new Studio in Santa Monica

The brand new international design studio is near one of the vital vital and complicated mobility hubs on the earth, and within the coronary heart of “Silicon Seaside” – the trendsetting design, media, and expertise hotspot of Southern California.

From the official Press Launch:

The brand new studio, protecting an space of about 16,500 sq. toes, is the most important of the three international Designworks studios together with areas in Munich and Shanghai. The construction and gear of the every of those services assist the transformation from bodily to digital design and improvement.

With a mission to form the way forward for mobility, Designworks’ new studio will draw inspiration from this setting in its work on behalf of the BMW Group, and with shoppers from quite a few different industries starting from mobility and transportation to client electronics, charging infrastructure and inside areas.

As each a design studio and inventive suppose tank Designworks identifies international traits and offers inspiration within the fields of innovation, design, and sustainability.

Over the previous 50 years, Designworks’ capabilities and enterprise have expanded: from initially creating basic clay fashions for automobile design to growing holistic mobility options that serve the entire ecosystem of city areas.

“Santa Monica is a check 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 totally exploit the freedoms digitalization provides us,” mentioned 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 direction of digital communication, and we’re capable of carry the outcomes of our work to life for shoppers in a wholly new approach.

Integrating artwork and design to form the longer term

The mix of artwork and design has historically performed a significant function in BMW Group Design’s inventive work. “Artists and designers alike are ahead thinkers who query the established order, velocity 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 will 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 Car properly upfront of the official unveiling. Demand took detailed photographs of the BMW Imaginative and prescient M NEXT that captured the central concepts of the automobile in a creative method, with out revealing the complete design.

Designworks because the BMW Group’s inventive suppose tank

As a BMW Group subsidiary, Designworks is concerned in lots of inside design tasks inside the firm. Additional, the sharing of concepts and experience developed via the studio’s work with exterior shoppers from different sectors offers an “outside-in” perspective which helps to tell and enrich the event of the corporate’s person centric strategy.

On this approach, 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, resembling bacteria-based, plastic-free and non-animal textiles that give surfaces a high-quality feel and look and supply excessive sturdiness.

The BMW M Hybrid V8 race automotive, which not too long ago 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 basic 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 coloration altering E Ink expertise.

The app permits customers to create a “digital twin” of the automobile in any coloration or sample with their smartphone, and venture it just about onto any background, demonstrating how the idea may dwell in the actual and the digital worlds.

(Supply: BMW)