Car Design

This paper discusses the challenges of developing ‘Styling DNA’ for car design. Existing theories, models and frameworks towards styling DNA are still fuzzy. Many car industries are still struggling with establishing a novel fact from styling DNA that can be used as a point of reference in supporting design concepts and specifications. There are two research directions towards styling DNA for car design in design methodologies; one is Algorithmic approach and the other is Manual approach. The example of Algorithmic approach is a Genetic Algorithm (GA). GA is an engineering analysis which is based on technology-driven direction. It evolved on the method of calculation which generates each item from some encoded form known as a chromosome that mutated to class new items. Meanwhile, the example of Manual approach is Human Visual Interaction (HVI). HVI refers to the design and implementation of product characters that people interact with. It is a study of design between people and prod...

This is a research study based on an analysis which sets out to identify and pinpoint ergonomic and usability problems
found in a sample of automobile dashboards. The sample consisted of three dashboards, of three different makes and
characterized as being a popular model, an average model and a luxury model. The examination was conducted by observation,
with the aid of photography, notes and open interview, questionnaires and performing tasks with users, the bases of which are
on the principles laid down by methodologies. From this it was possible to point to the existence of problems such as: complaints
about the layout, lighting, colors, available area, difficult access to points of interaction, such as buttons, and the difficult
nomenclature of dials. Later, the findings and recommendations presented show the need for a further, deeper study, using
more accurate tools, a larger sample of users, and an anthropometric study focused on the dashboard, since reading and understanding
it have to be done quickly and accurately, and that more attention be given to the study of automobile dashboards,
particularly in the most popular vehicles in order to maintain the standards of usability, and drivers’ comfort and safety.

Nel secondo dopoguerra, nella Torino che sin dagli inizi del Novecento è stata la capitale del rivoluzionario paradigma a quattro ruote della modernità, ha origine la trasformazione produttiva della cosiddetta motorizzazione di massa italiana. In poco tempo l’automobile diviene accessibile per fasce di acquirenti sempre più ampie e, grazie ad una pratica vieppiù generalizzata, consolida un’egemonia funzionale e simbolica ancora oggi pressoché intatta.
La diffusione della motorizzazione coincide anche con una definitiva differenziazione identitaria dello stile automobilistico nazionale, contrassegnato da misurate espressioni di potenza, linee sobrie e confortevoli, e da dettagli di particolare eleganza. In tale contesto, significativamente proprio nel capoluogo piemontese, viene realizzato il Museo dell’Automobile, intitolato al collezionista di veicoli storici Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia.
L’edificio, inaugurato alla fine del 1960, tramanda la memoria di scienziati, costruttori e campioni dei circuiti, in una visione documentaria e celebrativa dell’auto destinata a riscuotere per molti anni un indiscusso successo di pubblico. Nel 2002 i vertici dell’istituzione museale valutano la praticabilità di un progetto di ampliamento e rinnovamento dell’edificio che viene portato a termine nel 2011, sotto la regia progettuale dell’architetto Cino Zucchi.
Una nuova ala presenta all’interno uno spazio indiviso estremamente flessibile e all’esterno è definita da un sinuoso involucro in acciaio e vetro serigrafato. Tale palinsesto, dinamico e comunicativo, abbraccia il fianco e il retro dell’intero complesso, unificandone e rinnovandone profondamente l’immagine. Al piano terreno Zucchi progetta un bookshop, una caffetteria e una grande corte coperta: si tratta di nuovi spazi dedicati all’incontro e all’aggregazione delle persone che, unitamente a una nuova selezione espositiva e a un nuovo allestimento curato da François Confino, decretano la decisiva mutazione del museo da monumentale contenitore celebrativo a generatore culturale complesso.

Research suggests that color appropriateness differs as a function of object type. Thus, a color may be perceived as appropriate for one product and inappropriate for another product. We argue that perceived appropriateness depends upon the congruity of the affective qualities of a color with those of the product. This assumption was addressed in two studies in which participants assigned the best matching color out of 13 Munsell colors to each of seven car types. Additionally, affective qualities of both colors and car types were measured on semantic differential scales. The first study showed that color appropriateness varied according to car type. As predicted, the affective qualities of the assigned colors tended to be congruent with the affective qualities of the car types. Affective congruity along the potency dimension of the semantic differential was of particular importance in explaining assignments of colors to car types. The second study was a replication of the first study but with a different sample. The results confirmed what we found in the first study. An interesting difference was, however, that activity (not potency) turned out to be the most important dimension of the semantic differential in explaining assignments of colors to car types. Implications for product development and marketing practice are discussed.

Innovativeness is defined as ‘originality by virtue of introducing new ideas’. Thus, innovative designs often break common visual habits and are evaluated as relatively unattractive at first sight (Leder & Carbon, 2005). In most empirical studies, attractiveness is measured only once. These measures do not capture the dynamic aspects of innovation. This paper presents a dynamic procedure, the Repeated Evaluation Technique (RET), that improves the validity of attractiveness evaluations. RET simulates time and exposure effects of everyday life. Using RET, we investigated the appreciation of different car designs varying in innovativeness and curvature. While the mere exposure theory (Zajonc, 1968) would predict a general increase of liking in increasing exposure, RET revealed dissociate effects depending on innovativeness. Only innovative designs showed an increase in attractiveness. Low innovative designs were rated as being relatively attractive in the beginning, but did not profit from elaboration due to RET. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Department of Industrial Design at the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) participated in the Fiat Auto's One Step Ahead (OSA) project in the fall semester of 2003. 19 senior year students in five teams explored the “Forever Children” scenario and developed 85 concept designs throughout the process that covered a period of ten weeks. The selection in this exhibition represents major directions developed by the teams.

""Shiny objects of desire, cars never cease to fascinate us. As symbols of freedom they return again and again in art and film, even if real freedom is sometimes only achieved in the final explosive crash – the climax of the sheer exhilaration of speed.
Why are we so obsessed by cars? ‘Car crash culture’ is a symptom of the twentieth century, Ricarda Vidal argues in this book, revealing that our love of the car and technology is caused by the continuing influence of turn-of-the-century ideas: the Futurist technological utopia and the Romantic return to nature and desire. Artists, writers and filmmakers have explored this troubled love affair with the automobile throughout the past century. The work of F. T. Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, Jack Kerouac, Andy Warhol, Jean-Luc Godard (Week End), Richard Sarafian (Vanishing Point), J. G. Ballard and David Cronenberg (Crash), Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof) and Sarah Lucas, among others, are shown to pursue these ideals, even as developments in modern cities and telecommunications continue to change the nature of speed and technology.
While the first half of the twentieth century was concerned with the celebration of speed and acceleration, the car crash has now become an obsession of contemporary culture. Vidal concludes that our attraction to the car crash reflects the contemporary way of life in the West, which is defined by a Futurist technophilia, a Romantic longing for a higher meaning and an undeniable infatuation with the automobile."

Review by Enda Duffy:
‘Death and Desire in Car Crash Culture: A Century of Romantic Futurisms by Ricarda Vidal is a terrific addition to speed studies.  At its heart is the insight that the car crash functions in Western culture today much as the ruined cathedral did for the Victorians: a scene of lurid fascination where all our desires – about technology, excitement and what it means to be human – converge.  Vidal reads Futurism as a late Romantic movement.  She then traces the persistence of Futurism’s spirit and paradoxes in a whole century of work on car culture, from Kerouac’s On the Road to Cortázar’s ‘The Motorway of the South’ and Ballard’s Crash, to Warhol’s car crash silk-screens and Antun Maračić’s photograph series Cro Car Crash Chronicle, After War/hol.  Equally at home in literature, manifestos, theory, film, photography, painting, sculpture, installation art and pop culture, this book is full of rich and unexpected readings of works that deal with our deepest fears and excitements in the twentieth-century duel between humanism and technology. Eschewing any easy moralism, alive to speed as both ‘the only divinity’ today and its potential horror, Vidal’s book is a clear-eyed reading of high points of a new, more grim romanticism, in which the crash is the spectacle of finitude.  Death and Desire in Car Crash Culture is a brilliant reading of  the convergence of desire and technology in some of the most challenging works of modern culture.’

Enda Duffy, Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, author of The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism"

El diseño de transporte de los países desarrollados, tanto académico como industrial, convive con paradojas relacionadas con los problemas de movilidad presentados en la mayoría de megaciudades del mundo, especialmente las latinoamericanas, debido a su abundante producción intelectual relacionada con el carro.
No obstante Latinoamérica no deja de alimentar aquella industria con sus más talentosos diseñadores, sin siquiera dar espacio a la reflexión acerca de la manera en que están alimentando el problema.
Este texto da cuenta de la forma de operar de Creatorio de Movilidad: organización bogotana creada para trabajar, desde la empresa privada, por mejorar las condiciones de movilidad de quienes habitan las ciudades latinoamericanas, revisando críticamente dos elementos fundamentales, a saber, el oficio del diseñador de transporte tal y como ejerce en los países potencia del sector y su impacto en Latinoamérica, y el impacto que el empresario tradicional genera –incluso en la movilidad- al seguir el canon tradicional de éxito organizacional, matizado por la acumulación de capital, de trabajo y la exaltación del mérito como instrumento validador de los anteriores.

The International Competition for Verona Arena Coverage has animated the international debate on the theme of contemporary intervention on ancient architecture. The NFRG of Politecnico of Bari has proposed an experimental, reversible, modular and structurally independent roofing solution. Starting from the study of the velaria, the group has come to a design research inspired by the Kinetic Architecture.

Ponencia "Diseño para una cultura de la movilidad y la vida tranquila" presentada por Cristiam Sabogal, cofundador y director de diseño de Creatorio de movilidad (www.creatorio.co) en el marco de la 2ª Bienal Internacional Tadeísta de Diseño "Diseño del Sur", realizada del 8 al 12 de septiembre de 2014.

Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Septiembre 12 de 2014. Bogotá, Colombia.

Presentation "Design for a mobility culture", made by Cristiam Sabogal -cofounder and design director from Creatorio de Movilidad- for the 2nd International Bienal Tadeista of Design "Design of the south", helded from september 8th to 12th of 2014.

Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, September 12th, 2014. Bogotá, Colombia.