The brand new international design studio is near one of the crucial vital 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, protecting 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 gear of the every of those amenities help 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 shopper electronics, charging infrastructure and inside areas.

As each a design studio and artistic assume 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 creating 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 helpful 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 offers us,” mentioned the Head of Designworks, Holger Hampf. “Private interplay stays a focus, however we do work in another way in Santa Monica: On this new workspace, our processes are geared in the direction of digital communication, and we’re in a position to carry the outcomes of our work to life for shoppers in a completely new approach.

Integrating artwork and design to form the longer term

The mixture of artwork and design has historically performed a serious position in BMW Group Design’s artistic 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 may 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 effectively 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 a creative method, with out revealing the total design.

Designworks because the BMW Group’s artistic assume tank

As a BMW Group subsidiary, Designworks is concerned in lots of inner design initiatives throughout 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 consumer centric method.

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 fully new manufacturing strategies and environmentally suitable, recyclable supplies, akin to 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 automobile, 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 vehicles and brings parts of 5 many years of motorsports historical past into the current day.

For the newest Client 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 allows customers to create a “digital twin” of the automobile in any coloration or sample with their smartphone, and mission it nearly onto any background, demonstrating how the idea might reside in the actual and the digital worlds.

(Supply: BMW)