From the virtual hypercar to tomorrow’s mobility
How do you achieve the perfect balance between creativity and technology? This is not the slogan of the “Beyond Mobility” event organized by the Institute of Applied Art and Design (IAAD) of Turin on 13 September, but it is the underlying theme that emerged in the meeting with students and coordinators of activities related to car design and summarized under the Garage IAAD label, which had as its highlight the presentation of the Sjov project. It is a hypercar conceived by the students of the Master in Transportation Design, coordinated by designer Davide Tealdi, over the course of just five weeks in collaboration with Esiste Group, inspired by the Danish factory Zenvo, which passed on its sporting DNA to the work team.
The basic idea was to design a car that could be lowered into the digital universe of a racing video game, but a virtual prototype was born, represented in its basic form by a sculpture in light material on which three bodies were virtually modeled that can be seen in the real environment through VR / AR viewers. All thanks to the joint work with the Turin-based Esiste, specialized in 3D modeling and prototyping, with the Spanish Made In Verse for integration with virtual and augmented reality technologies and with the Norwegian Nablaflow and its software for the simulation of aerodynamic flows. Esiste, through its Bottega Torinese division, also took care of the creation of the sculpture with computerized milling techniques and artisanal finishing.
The transport between rationality and emotion. Walter de Silva: “It’s the limits that stimulate the imagination”
The presentation of Sjov was followed by the round table “Visionary Roads”, which compared the visions and opinions of three established designers: Andrea Mocellin, an independent firm active in a transversal way on various mobility projects and author of the Bertone GB110 supercar, Nicola Danza, Exterior Design Manager of Hyundai Europe, and Davide Amantea, Chief Design Officer at Automobili Pininfarina, moderated by Luca Borgogno and Dario Olivero, coordinators of the IAAD masters.
Guest of honor, connected by video conference, was architect Walter De Silva, who opened the meeting by proposing a detailed vision of the future of mobility and the role of designers in future scenarios. In his greeting and best wishes to the students, the great designer encouraged young minds to exploit limits as an opportunity to exercise their imagination: “The absence of constraints presupposes a great availability of resources, trust and consensus, an unrealistic condition. Instead, we need to get used to being limited and cultivate creativity to solve problems.”
These reflections were joined by those of the other guests: Andrea Mocelin defined mobility as “a primitive concept to which the designer must find a form”, Nicola Danza spoke of the vision of large companies, oriented towards becoming less and less car manufacturers and more and more “mobility providers”, ranging from robotics to hydrogen, and how the study of a vehicle starts “less and less from style and more and more from function. For this reason, today we are less stylists and more designers.” The emotional aspect, on the other hand, was at the center of Davide Amantea’s speech: “The very idea of mobility is a central theme of existence and brings with it a set of sensations that constitute the experience of moving, so its conception can never disregard the emotional aspect.”
