The brand new international design studio is near one of the essential and sophisticated mobility hubs on this planet, 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, overlaying an space of about 16,500 sq. ft, is the most important of the three international Designworks studios together with areas in Munich and Shanghai. The construction and tools of the every of those services help 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 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 artistic 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 creating 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 invaluable 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 a different way in Santa Monica: On this new workspace, our processes are geared in the direction of digital communication, and we’re capable of carry the outcomes of our work to life for shoppers in a wholly new means.

Integrating artwork and design to form the longer term

The mixture 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 could 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 photographs 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 inner design initiatives inside the firm. Additional, the sharing of concepts and experience developed by the studio’s work with exterior shoppers from different sectors supplies an “outside-in” perspective which helps to tell and enrich the event of the corporate’s consumer centric strategy.

On this means, 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 appropriate, 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 just 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 parts of 5 a long time of motorsports historical past into the current day.

For the newest 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 know-how.

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

(Supply: BMW)