The Royal College of Art, 11/9/10 Design Relationships: The ways design relates to commerce and the ways it touches people

I don't differentiate between a chair, a sculpture or a car. As Sam has said to me in the past, cars are the most ubiquitous form of design in our lives, experienced on a daily basis literally thousands of times. Yet we don't see them while driving and leave them after parking. Though I must admit I keep mine in my office, with one half under my desk. 

Now I’d like to speak about what is called Design Art. This is a rather artificial term recently coined by an auction house to market high- end furniture like art. Design Art aped the art market releasing objects in limited editions, usually of 12 for no rhyme or reason, and in the process raised the bar of what you can get away with charging for a chair. This originated with the practice of casting bronze sculptures in more than one due to process of creating moulds from which to cast objects. And it worked: spawning countless design auctions, galleries and fairs, among the most prominent is the fair associated with Basel, the main event in Switzerland and the coming version in Miami next month.


Though design art may seem a gimmick to ascribe higher value to what is in effect simply another chair or a sofa, the key issue, which I feel can have dramatic implications for the car industry is that it does permit designers a wider platform to experiment with less commercially viable materials and technologies that could not readily be put into production.


Marc Newson, the poster boy for design art, has designed a widely acclaimed prototype for Ford and most famously the Lockheed Lounge, inspired by the riveted wings of a plane, which has been featured in a Madonna video and has fetched more that $2.5m in a private sale. Newson’s Locheed was fabricated in an addition of 8 with 4 proofs-if you add that up in total, you can afford a Lockheed plane with the proceeds of the edition, Conran’s should take note. More recently Newson has done a boat for Riva, a plane interior for Quantas and an actual spaceship, and regularly exhibits for the worlds most prestigious gallery-Gagosian, where in New York (Gagosian has about 500 galleries but that’s another talk) he presently has an exhibit solely based on the theme of transportation.


My point is that why shouldn't cars premier at museums and galleries and be marketed like works of art-like limited edition sculptures? I've been successful in convincing Phillips auction house most known for flogging Koons, to sell cars in their design sales (by the way, last night they sold a Warhol for nearly $63.5m in a $137m contemporary art sale, dwarfing last year’s $7m auction).


In 2006 I commissioned architect Zaha Hadid to design the Z Car concept, of which we have now done two iterations, a 3 and 4 wheel prototype. Zaha has created many transport relevant designs from a parking lot in France, a firehouse in Basel, the BMW factory in Leipzig, a new boat as well, and is nearing completion on the extraordinary Olympic swimming pavilion—a 17,000 seat arena. In an amazing act of democratizing the factory, the conveyor belt for BMW, where the 3 series is built, travels overhead though the cafeteria and executive offices.


The Z Car, of which we have a few 1:1 scale models, has traveled from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to Museums and galleries throughout Europe, the States and the Middle East. Major manufactures could learn something from such a bespoke design led approach. It takes the same money to design an awful car as an awfully nice one. And I'd visit any museum in the world to see a Frank Stephenson exhibit and be happy to collect his and other designer’s drawings. Sadly and undeservedly, car designers are the unsung heroes of aesthetics. But on a more practical level, why not use existing platforms like having Hadid re-skin a T25 Gordon Murray city car for the Olympics?


Though I am a bit extreme in my appreciation of all things cars, even as static objects, the public is being sold short by the degree of mediocrity in the world of vehicle design. Today, design seems so homogenous the world over, but its much worse in the states where driving down the motorway seems like a continuous block of metal—like soviet block architecture on wheels which is endlessly depressing. We live in a universe defined by an unprecedented degree of choice, so why not when it comes to cars too?

Royal College of Art Vehicle Design Department Lecture, 4/26/10

Re: car design, we don't notice it when we drive one, then park it and leave it. Cars are the most ubiquitous and overlooked form of design in our lives. Personally, i don't differentiate between a well done Porsche, plate or Picasso. However, much of contemporary car design reminds me of mainstream Hollywood films: produced for the lowest common denominator, and in the process, vastly underestimating the capacity of the public to appreciate good industrial design (and film!).


For example, why does the Prius look like the equivalent of cod liver oil or an orthopedic shoe—its as if it was created to be like a dose of medicine; shut your eyes, open your mouth, this is good for you. Not to mention the G-Whiz, which looks like a stubby toe. Surely, good design doesn’t cost prohibitively more than bad design, and even if there was a slight premium, I think people would gladly step up.


If you look at how spectacularly well the classic car market has preformed in the face of the world’s worst recession, this phenomenon is almost certainly a reaction to the homogenized design of most contemporary vehicles. Some of which can be said to reflect regulatory control but probably more so a lack of imagination and determination on the part of the auto industry.


One possible model going forward (sorry for pun) is that based on the movement of Design Art, a term coined by Phillips auction house to delineate furniture and design objects produced in limited editions. Although after much speculation in the market that saw a chaise lounge by Marc Newson (who also did an unproduced car for Ford) go for over $1.5m, the segment is settling in and here for the long run.


I don’t believe Design Art was sheer marketing folly to create exclusive things for exclusive people but rather a way to encourage experimentation in processes and materials for objects otherwise too labor intensive to go into mass production. Besides, the fact is that high-end furniture cost the same, or very close to, limited edition designs, so why not enjoy the possible upside of such an investment?


In 2006 I commissioned the London based Iraqi Pritzker prize winning architect of the upcoming Olympic swimming stadium, Zaha Hadid, to design a concept car based on her notion of (near) future transport. Its not as far fetched as it seems as in the past she has designed the BMW factory, and a parking lot in France—so why not focus on what gets made in the factory and parked in the lot? Though I never got as far as production, they say the car business is an effective way to make a lot of money into a little, I am certain I would be able to sell and sell well, a limited edition car to design and architecture enthusiasts. This is a nimble way to go forward to launch progressively designed cars for a niche market, possibly skinning an existing platform like Gordon Murray’s T25 concept.


Since the Z Car, I have commissioned engineer Cecil Balmond, architects Diller & Scofidio and a handful of artists, architects and industrial designers to do concept cars for a book and traveling museum exhibit. More than anything, I’d like to see one or more on the road! For years BMW has successfully commissioned art cars as a marketing scheme; but it’s beyond me why they wouldn’t have put all or some into production rather than shooting for brief spurts of publicity like the recently announced collaboration with Jeff Koons. And only today, after I posted a picture on Facebook of a Lancia I custom painted, someone commented: “So when will we see a Banksy car?” If only I could afford one!


Marcel Duchamp said art in museums should have a shelf life, then be disposed of from collections. There are many new and unexplored ways forward in car design, like cars with multiple panels that could be changed and disposed of like cigarette lighters, but industry needs to take a more aggressive and progressive stance to make it (and more) happen.

Royal College of Art, Vehicle Design Dept. Lecture, "The Role of the Vehicle Designer – Where is it Headed?"

Incredibly, barely a week goes by without the announcement of a new car company—many with green credentials, hopeful to make the world a cleaner, more efficient place; but just as many are for extreme vehicles with no rhyme or reason in today’s ecologically minded landscape. With markets expanding exponentially in China, India, Russia and the Middle East there are probably more opportunities for expansion in the realm of car manufacturing and design than at any point in history since the industrial revolution. With such flux, paradigm shifting models like the Nano,Tesla and Gordon Murray's T25 are sure to arise with greater frequency including degrees of personal customization unimaginable today.