Lifestyle

The future of SUV design.

SUV design – the Future.

A while back in December, I announced that I was one of the judges for Hyundai’s Innovators of the future competition.

The competition sought entries to design the interior of a driverless Hyundai SUV based on the below criteria:

  1. Is the design innovative?
  2. Does the design have future proofing?
  3. Is the design seamless?
  4. Does their design take sustainability into account?

It’s a pleasure to announce the winner as Emily Armitstead, and the runner up as Thomas Chapman.

I thought I’d show you their amazing designs.

SUV designFirst of all, this is the winning design by Emily Armitstead from Leeds art University.

Emily is a multidisciplinary designer with a love for colour, material and design, which she says drives her creativity.

She has a passion for trend forecasting and research through colour and material explorations.

Emily works with jesmonite, resin, wood and also recycled materials.

She loves exploring the challenging qualities of materials, to constitute colour and texture.

Emily proposes a radical future vision for a Sports Utility Vehicle interior, based on her idea that with climate change, the future may be a place where daylight is scarce and extreme weather conditions the norm.

She describes her design as ethereal, a diversity of colour, texture and form that explores iridescence and reflection of light on surfaces.

The material ( above) that Emily has chosen for the car interior seems melted, frozen, thawed, cracked, cloudy and vaporous.She has designed her car interior with tranquility in mind. The car features rotating seats, holograms and voice control technology.I’d love to experience that surrealism of light ( as Emily describes it), via the recycled solar glass panoramic roof on an interior of crystalline iridescence.Isn’t this design stunning? Love her innovative use of recycled materials to create this gorgeous pearlised effect.Next up, is Thomas Chapman’s SUV design.

Thomas is a 3rd year student studying product design at UCA in Farnham.

He tells me that he has always enjoyed taking objects such as music boxes apart, then putting them back together. He felt this process of demystifying magical objects, has led him to his path in product design.

Thomas sees the driverless car as an aid to a dynamic family, in addition to being an extension of the home.

He likens his vehicle to the family’s assistant, a space where efficiency and relaxation could co-exist.

He illustrates his idea with a scenario of the car acting as an office when dropping a parent off to work, a family space for the school pick up, a space for conversation when both parents are commuting home and a place for relaxation when the day is done.His idea of sustainability and future proofing is explained by how the space can be easily updated  without the need to purchase an entirely new car.I was interested to learn about his futuristic idea of movable furniture that are held in place by electromagnets when the engine is powered up.This is definitely a cool family car, a home from home, that allows for efficiency in addition to customisation.

Hope you have enjoyed reading about these 2 brilliant concepts.

Finally, I want to thank all the other wonderful entries. I certainly had a lot of difficulty coming to a decision.

Congratulations once again to Emily Armitstead for her winning SUV design.

( The photography, drawings and concepts belong to the respective owners Emily Armitstead and Thomas Chapman. I’ve had permission to use them for this post. This is a sponsored collaborative post with Hyundai, but all opinions are my own).

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