The brand new world design studio is near some of the essential and sophisticated mobility hubs on the 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 biggest of the three world Designworks studios together with areas in Munich and Shanghai. The construction and gear of the every of those amenities assist 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 shopper electronics, charging infrastructure and inside areas.

As each a design studio and inventive assume tank Designworks identifies world developments and gives 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 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 useful 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 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 capable of convey the outcomes of our work to life for shoppers in a wholly new means.

Integrating artwork and design to form the long run

The mixture of artwork and design has historically performed a significant position 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 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 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 total design.

Designworks because the BMW Group’s artistic assume tank

As a BMW Group subsidiary, Designworks is concerned in lots of inside design initiatives throughout the firm. Additional, the sharing of concepts and experience developed by means of the studio’s work with exterior shoppers from different sectors gives an “outside-in” perspective which helps to tell and enrich the event of the corporate’s consumer centric method.

On this means, Designworks developed two modern 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, similar 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 expertise required for environment friendly efficiency on the racetrack.

The paintwork remembers the colours of basic race vehicles and brings parts of 5 many years of motorsports historical past into the current day.

For the latest 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 venture it just about onto any background, demonstrating how the idea may stay in the true and the digital worlds.

(Supply: BMW)