The brand new world design studio is near one of the necessary and complicated mobility hubs on the earth, and within the coronary heart of “Silicon Seashore” – the trendsetting design, media, and know-how hotspot of Southern California.

From the official Press Launch:

The brand new studio, masking an space of about 16,500 sq. toes, is the biggest of the three world Designworks studios together with places in Munich and Shanghai. The construction and gear of the every of those amenities 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 atmosphere in its work on behalf of the BMW Group, and with shoppers 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 artistic suppose tank Designworks identifies world tendencies 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 traditional clay fashions for car design to creating holistic mobility options that serve the entire ecosystem of city areas.

“Santa Monica is a check mattress for the revolutionary 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 worthwhile 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,” 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 direction of digital communication, and we’re in a position to deliver the outcomes of our work to life for shoppers in a completely new method.

Integrating artwork and design to form the long run

The mix of artwork and design has historically performed a serious function in BMW Group Design’s artistic work. “Artists and designers alike are ahead thinkers who query the established order, velocity up the transformation and form the long run,” 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 long run.”

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 Car properly prematurely of the official unveiling. Demand took detailed pictures of the BMW Imaginative and prescient M NEXT that captured the central concepts of the car in a creative method, with out revealing the complete design.

Designworks because the BMW Group’s artistic suppose tank

As a BMW Group subsidiary, Designworks is concerned in lots of inner design tasks throughout the firm. Additional, the sharing of concepts and experience developed by way of 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 method.

On this method, Designworks developed two revolutionary seat research for the BMW model that mix sustainability with visionary design. In cooperation with start-ups, additionally it is experimenting with utterly new manufacturing strategies and environmentally suitable, recyclable supplies, corresponding to 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 know-how required for environment friendly efficiency on the racetrack.

The paintwork recollects the colours of traditional race automobiles and brings components of 5 many years 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 car that includes colour altering E Ink know-how.

The app permits customers to create a “digital twin” of the car in any colour or sample with their smartphone, and challenge it nearly onto any background, demonstrating how the idea might stay in the actual and the digital worlds.

(Supply: BMW)