Next-Gen Automotive Interiors: Where design, CMF and sustainability converge was the slogan, and our latest Interior event in Turin was a success with about 125 participants and a great lineup of speakers.
The venue was perfect, in the historical setting of automotive history we discussed and brought light to the future challenges and opportunities within our industry. The event started the first day after lunch with the first session of keynote speakers.
On stage we had: Michele Longo, Head of Fiat and Abarth Interior design, Andreas Wlasak, Global VP Design Forvia, Wouter Struijk, Senior Design Manager Granstudio, Sascha Klapper, Research and Analysis manager S&P Global Mobility and Italdesign represented by Davide Cassini, CTO and Matilde Piccioni, Concept Project Leader. It was a grand start to the event, with intriguing discussions.
Michele told us about Fiat design principles and especially the design of the Fiat Grande Panda and how the team took inspiration from the old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin and the fact that Pandas love bamboo, hence bamboo is used in parts of the dashboard. Fantastic to listen to Michele.
Next on stage was Andreas Wlasak, who delivered a great speech: “When Nothing is Certain, Everything is Possible”, with many personal reflections. He ended with an overview of Forvia’s latest concept vehicle. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s still humans who need to fit in the vehicles we design, and there is still a planet to take care of. Hence, “We as designers are professional empathists” – an insightful and apt quote.
Wouter from Granstudio took us through their way of working, especially the Digiphy tool they have developed to support the design process. A physical buck with seats, steering wheel and pedals that can be digitally controlled to mimic many different car configurations. In combination with VR glasses you can then experience your future design in a physical context. We were at the Granstudio office in the morning and got to try it – very impressive.
Then we had Sascha Klapper on stage, delivering fresh insights and forecasts from S&P Global Mobility – covered in depth elsewhere in this newsletter.
After that, we wound up the first session with Italdesign’s Davide Cassini and Matilde Piccioni telling about what they do and especially one fantastic project of theirs, the ReSedo Sustainable Automotive Seat. Having worked with seats myself as an interior designer, I know how challenging this can be and I was very impressed with their concept.
The structure is made with metal additive manufacturing; the trim cover is 3D-knitted with recycled yarns. The foam layer is recycled together with Nike Grind, contact points are made with 3D printed TPU in a flexible lattice structure, and the backshell is recycled polyamide. The whole thing is super slim and lightweight. Lots of great thinking behind this one. See more about it in this video.
We concluded the first session with a roundtable to discuss the presentations we just had seen and also a future outlook.
Very good discussion where we came around topics like how AI can affect the future of interior design, screen overload versus physical buttons returning. According to the outlook from Sascha, screens will continue to increase, but also smart surfaces are coming strong.
Then the cocktail hour and dinner took place. Plenty of great meetings and busy connecting people. That´s one of the great things about the DVN community!
Next week we will cover Part 2 of the event – stay tuned !!
