RE:START is the new Spark blog dedicated to survival on, and of this planet. All things considered, with an emphasis on design. Please send us your news and views to restart @ sparkawards. com. continue reading…
Check out this lively blog about the fascinating world of industrial design. Key contributor is Sally Dominquez. Please send us your news and views to shapesters @ sparkawards. com. You can find more Sally here: http://www.sallydominguez.com/
China in the B class
Sally Dominguez
Five years ago I cowered in terror as my driver speared down the wrong side of a Chinese motorway and slalomed through oncoming traffic. I swore then that I would never – NEVER – drive in China again. But here I am, this time armed with my own Chinese drivers license, lured by the opportunity to pit Mercedes safety and technology against the twelve million Chinese drivers who average less than 5 years experience behind a wheel. The deal breaker: my chariot is the Mercedes B-Class F-cell hydrogen electric car, and I am keen to know whether this technology could be the answer for the intensely polluted cities of the world.
I first drove the B-Class F-Cell around the basement of the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. What struck me then was the normality of the vehicle, compared to the beetle shapes of Leaf, Clarity et al and the look-at-me interior energy displays of the Prius. 
Although the F-Cell is a hydrogen-fueled car replete with a host of patented innovations, only a snappy paint job differentiates the exterior from a standard B Class. Lack of engine noise aside, the only way you would know this car was different would be to bury your nose in the exhaust pipe and suck up the warm, pure water vapour. Similarly, there is not much to differentiate the drivability of the car from its petrol-fueled sibling. That is a very deliberate move by Mercedes Benz to placate the public and ensure that the transition from petrol to electric technologies is as painless as possible for the traditional Benz customer. The exterior and interior design of the F-cell may not have particular Spark Design appeal, but what’s hidden inside the guts of this car is some impressive and innovative technology. Have we ever awarded a design for a fuel tank? (Editor’s note: You’re the judge!)
The F-cell houses its drive train in the sandwich floor of B-Class so, unlike some electric vehicles, there is no compromise in interior volume. Dynamics are marginally improved by a lower centre of gravity, as four kilograms of liquid hydrogen fuel is stored under the rear seats, in three heavy pods of carbon fibre-wrapped rubber that are literally bulletproof. Having shrugged off misguided jokes about hydrogen bombs before I left I was secretly relieved to hear that the rigorous Benz testing involved successfully dropping the tanks off buildings and shooting them. Forward is the fuel cell stack where hydrogen reacts with air to produce electrical power, and behind the fuel tanks is a lithium-ion battery drawing power from the fuel cell, supplemented by regenerative braking. An electric motor housed under the bonnet runs off the fuel cell stack and the battery, supplying the F-cell with a range of more than 400 kilometres – double the range of the all-electric 2-seater Tesla Roadster or the 5-seater Nissan Leaf.
Turn the key – no Start buttons here – and that strange silence we are learning to get used to with electric vehicles means the F-cell is ready to roll. The whole hydrogen/electric ensemble adds around 700kg to the overall weight of the car but there is no lag in the 290Nm torque generated and you don’t feel the extra load.
Ducking and weaving through kamikaze Beijing traffic, the F-cell is in its element and the neat consumption bar graph, which measures the amount of hydrogen in kg/100km consumed in the last 15 minutes, makes it easy to establish the hydrogen-friendly way to drive and sets up a consumption competition between me and my German co-driver Marcus. I quickly establish that easing off the throttle is better than braking per se and that the energy use is a simple equation: the faster you drive the more hydrogen you consume – there is no “sweet spot” to play with. With air-conditioning on full-blast to filter that heinous Beijing air the car proves as nimble as its B 180 CDI equivalent.
On the open road we are flying along at 120km with a hydrogen consumption rate of 1.13kg/100km, except when we need to swerve into the emergency lane to avoid meandering lorries and the occasional 3-wheeler driving against the stream. Comfort again is classic B Class – on a 3-day road trip I would prefer more support as a driver and more plush as a passenger. There’s nothing to offend except the lack of auxiliary audio input. As we howl along to some local radio and curse the Benzgineer who skimped, I wonder about the efficiency of the cruise control and curiously find it less efficient – the bars climb to 1.15, then 1.18 before I am acutely aware that my range is dropping fast. With no plans to visit for any length of time at a Chinese rest stop, I ditch cruise control as Marcus (who has driven more than 65 days so far in the F-Cell and knows it inside out) explains how the range readout recalibrates to a worse case scenario. He ran 360km in Arizona with the low fuel light on and the car didn’t stop. 
The best indication of range is the total weight left in the tanks cross-referenced with the bar readout. Interestingly the range also depends on the temperature at fueling, with warmer climates causing the hydrogen to expand during filling, losing the car around 140 grams of hydrogen. Filling, which takes place at the dreaded rest stop, comprises a local semi laden with hydrogen cylinders and the Mercedes trailer van combo containing pump and compressor. An entourage of engineers, technicians and a Benz camera crew oversee the pump connections and check the seals – hydrogen is such a small light molecule that it will float away through the tiniest gap. 
Our refuel takes twenty minutes because we are using 80-degree liquid hydrogen pressurized at 700 bars. If the gas could be cooled to -16 degrees Celsius, as it would be at a permanent refueling station, refueling would take 3 minutes and the cylinders would be entirely filled. Marcus tells me that the team refueled twice at permanent hydrogen stations in California and demonstrated the admirable 3-minute refill. That’s more than 3 hours faster than the Tesla recharge and more than 6 ½ hours faster than the Nissan Leaf.
.
The success of the F-cell technology hinges on an adequate infrastructure and decent production numbers. Right now the cost of hand-producing the composite fuel cylinders is huge but Mercedes is ready to roll if governments come to the party. Consumer success also hinges on an uncompromised, user-friendly vehicle and the F-cell nails that criteria. Whether its hurling to a stop when the highway suddenly drops down a 20cm ledge or accelerating out of a potential truck sandwich with seconds to spare, driving in China demonstrated a rugged and straightforward car that that excels at city driving and thankfully spits nothing but water wherever it goes. With a range worthy of an Australian suburban car I was disappointed that the Australian government did not show more interest in the F-Cell when it made its Aussie debut. Lets hope Chinese authorities have more foresight and see the European hydrogen highway as the perfect model to utilise their significant wind power projects and produce clean fuel for the polluted cities of Shanxi Province.
Best!
–Sally
PLASTIKI PET Project
The Plastiki PET-hulled boat might be old news now but the innovations that made the journey are more relevant than ever as PET continues to be exploited for its upcycling potential.
It took almost five months for the catamaran with the PET-bottle hulls to make its way from San Francisco to Sydney – that’s almost two months slower than planned. Most boats are built for speed and stability but Plastiki, like its namesake the Kon Tiki, was a proof of concept vessel described by David de Rothschild as a “symbol of solutions” and designed to grab headlines while testing various PET-based materials and alternative energy concepts.
The striking 12,500 bottle-strong design honed by Australian naval architect Andy Dovell is likened by de Rothschild to a pomegranate, the dry ice-filled bottle “seeds” providing 62% of the ballast grouped together to form the hulls but also separate enough that one or two failures would not mean disintegration.
Although hydro dynamically inefficient the unskinned bottles visually conveyed the PET-content of the vessel to audiences around the world. Less visually captivating but far more transformational is the material invented in Europe and trialed on the Plastiki voyage, a PET-based material named srPET. Self-reinforcing plastics gain advanced strength and stiffness from their highly oriented polymer fibres with typically five times the stiffness and strength values of unreinforced plastic. srPET is used as a structural skin on all the non-bottle surfaces of the boat including the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic cabin. srPET is expected to compare in strength and usefulness to fiberglass, but with none of the health issues associated with glass fibres, and all the recycling benefits of being a homogenous plastic material. This thin skin of srPET along with the srPET board material used in the hull structure currently require virgin polyethylene terephthalate but the srPET textile used for the sail utilizes recycled PET and is bonded with a specially developed organic glue made from sugar cane and cashew nuts and currently being commercialized by Adventure Ecology.
A postmortem on the voyage of the Plastiki revealed a crew reluctant to set sail on a bottle raft again any time soon but enthusiastic at the success of the srPET iterations trialed over the months at sea. Composites Evolution, the UK company behind the Aptiform PET-based products, suggest that the light weight, low cost and recyclability of srPET is particularly applicable to large, low volume parts, making it an ideal material for sustainable transportation applications. (Sally’s Plastiki story was first published in Curve Magazine.)
This is a really exciting use of HOG and one that we will be promoting throughout the Bay Area now that California has been told to expect a Mother of all Storms in addition to the Mother of all Quakes. Turns out the other comparable emergency water sources are either pallets of single-use water bottles that need replacing every 6 months or – wait for it – barrels that ROLL!
GREEN AUTO PAPER PLAY
By Sally Dominguez
Cardboard as a construction basic is serious paper play for adults. From Frank Gehry’s Wiggle Chair to the Finnish designed acoustic cardboard listening space Mafoombey, cardboard is an oft-ignored heavyweight contender for green building.
What about a finer-gauge of paper, though? Brazilian Claudio Dias brings a technical eye for minute detail to the art of paper models to create serious paper play for kids and adults. Worried that China-made toys are invested with lead? With a bit of imagination, and some help from Claudio, you can follow his FREE fold ‘em and keep ‘em models to create intricate origami toys such as the Delorean in Back to the Future and the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. No nasty side effects included.
Stuck on the freeway in pouring rain? With a little forethought and some glue you could be whipping up the Interceptor on your dashboard. 
Best of all – these cool designs are free!! With detailed instructions you just print, cut, and fold like a loon.
I felt the need to connect – as they say in the USA – with this master autorigamist:
Claudio, the detail on your models is incredible. Do you have a basic outline you tweak for each paper car design, or is every new model painstakingly conceived from scratch?
When I want to design a new model, I search the internet to find any reference material that could be used. Ortho views, schematics, pictures, and even 3D mesh. If you have something ‘technical’ like views or 3D, it makes easier to design the model. If not, you must be creative to say the least.
1966 Batmobile, Mad Max Interceptor, Delorean were the only ones I found technical information. All the others cars were from scratch.
What paper should your designs be printed on for the ideal result? Is there a particular weight and texture you design for?
The weight depends on the level of details. As a general rule, I recommend 90-120gsm paper for small parts (folks that means all your used office paper can be turned into star vehicles so save it and print Claudio’s patterns on the back) and 15-180gsm for bigger ones.
The final look of the car determines the texture. I use glossy paper for shiny cars. 
The Tumbler, for example requires matte paper.
What is your favourite paper model to date?
Well, it’s not a car… It’s a robot that transforms into a car : Bumblebee. Speaking of cars, the 1966 Batmobile. It’s my first model and it reminds me my childhood.
Has there been a car that you have tried but not been able to model in paper?
No. I’ve finished all models I’ve started. Perhaps, I keep distance from the impossible ones… A friend of mine once asked me to join him in a project – The Nemo’s car from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. 
Which is saying a lot because the models we can download are pretty complex. For instance, there are 72 steps for the 1966 Batmobile.
And for the selfless, and health-conscious tot-toting readers, Claudio’s site www.paperinside.com also has models of PowderPuff Girls and Bruce the Shark which you can whip up for the young ‘uns, safe in the knowledge that they are relatively chew friendly.
MORE SERIOUS PAPER PLAY
by Sally Dominguez
Paper bags and cardboard boxes, butchers’ paper and newsprint hats. Paper plates, papier mache and the versatile matchbox, boxes for packing and moving and play– visionaries like Gehry and Shigeru Ban use it for structure but, whether the blame rests with neat stacking Lego and Lincoln Logs or span-worthy Meccano, most of us don’t consider cardboard as a construction basic.
With around 85% recycled content typically found in corrugated card, the material offers sustainable credentials that many other product and building materials cannot match. Frank Gehry’s seminal 1969 Wiggle chair, featuring 60 layers of corrugated card “Edge Board” screwed into compression, is a plain sexy investigation of how to achieve strength and sculpture through the opposite layering of corrugations. Shigeru Ban’s equally groundbreaking use of cardboard structure in halls, office buildings and houses epitomizes economy in use and lifecycle, marries the strength of the helically wound paper tube with simple, repeatable, affordable connection details. As the architect says, “I don’t like waste”.
Wiggle Chair
Shigeru Ban’s temporary studio, Pompidou Center
Online a smattering of origami-based modules demonstrates all manner of flat packing structure, like Bloxes, flat packed card blocks that interlock for DIY internal walls and structures. Swiss architect Nicola Enrico Staubli and his free, downloadable Foldschool designs. Eschewing the asymmetrical fold for the uniform concertina, the patented Liquid Cardboard creations of US-based Cardboard Designs are poetic and “freely transforming” vessels.
Bloxes
More pedestrian in form but super useful, compressed paper panel materials like Paperstone and EcoTop provide a paper-based replacement for pulp boards like MDF, utilizing the density and strength of papers en mass.
The ultimate in DIY cardboard emersion and superior acoustics has to be Mafoombey, a corrugated space both poetic and functional, designed for listening to music as part of the Finnish Habitare Fair 2005 by students Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepää. In awarding Mafoombey first prize Jasper Morrison commended the design for simply “turning the humble material of cardboard into something so wonderful”.
Mafoombey
AS SIMPLE AS A,B,C… OR NOT
June 12, 2009 by Sally Dominguez
Paid up unexpectedly for an article published yonks ago I decided to shout myself a design treat. For years I have yearned for an Ray Eames walnut stool.
Originally designed for the lobby of NYC’s Time-Life Building where they were coupled with leather armchairs, A, B and C in solid walnut have always captured my imagination. In an exhibition long ago I even tabled my own version in threaded, spun stainless steel sections as an all-weather, industrialized and slightly rustic interpretation. When Athol, my crusty but loveable old metal spinner died from inhaling decades of metal dust, Australia lost an irreplaceable craftsperson and I lost the only person who could spin stainless back on itself in a close take on Ray Eames’ curvaceous walnut B. Before then, and more so since, I have wanted an Eames stool. I always thought I loved B.
I love that this stool works either way up. I love that its gentle concave is a forgiving cup for any-sized bottom. I love the abstract references to chess, dumbbells, cogs, knuckles and axles. So with all that love in my soul I paced into the Mill Valley Design Within Reach to finally take my baby home.
I have never been a fan of the “apple-core-ness” of C so it was a tossup between A and B and when it came down to that – I was stuck. I tried visually separating the two into a neutral setting. I tried context, rearranging most of the DWR floor in growing desperation. With about 10 minutes before closing and no plans to exit sans stool I was in a decision-making quandary. Was it B, my favorite til that point, with its central squashed ball and positive outward curve? Or the tribal squat of A……. The ghost of Ray echoed in my head “You know what looks good can change, but what works works”. Well, they ALL work Ray…..
Suddenly, what luck! Random product designer to the rescue. Male. Apparently working on a new and tiny portable sound mixer. Rode a rockstar vintage bike. And made the observation that B is feminine, A is masculine, and he didn’t care much for C. My concentration thus broken I looked again at the punchy angles of A… and the deal was done.
What do you think?
Sally Dominguez, Rainwater Hog LLC
Architect and product designer Sally aims her sharp Australian wit at the design scenes on both sides of the Pacific. Check Shapesters and ASIANLINE for Sally
Sally Dominguez April 27 2010
Cardboard as a construction basic is serious paper play for adults. From Frank Gehry’s Wiggle Chair to the Finnish designed acoustic cardboard listening space Mafoombey, (http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=52409) cardboard is an oft-ignored heavyweight contender for green building.
What about a finer-gauge of paper, though? Brazilian Claudio Dias brings a technical eye for minute detail to the art of paper models to create serious paper play for kids and adults. Worried that China-made toys are invested with lead? With a bit of imagination, and some help from Claudio, you can follow his FREE fold ‘em and keep ‘em models to create intricate origami toys such as the Delorean in Back to the Future and the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. No nasty side effects included.
Stuck on the freeway in pouring rain? With a little forethought and some glue you could be whipping up the Interceptor on your dashboard. (image INTERCEPTOR) Feeling finicky? Try the crazy detail on the Ghostbusters Ecto 1.
(image ECTO)
Best of all – these cool designs are free!! With detailed instructions you just print, cut, and fold like a loon.
I felt the need to connect – as they say in the USA – with this master autorigamist:
Claudio, the detail on your models is incredible. Do you have a basic outline you tweak for each paper car design, or is every new model painstakingly conceived from scratch?
When I want to design a new model, I search the internet to find any reference material that could be used. Ortho views, schematics, pictures, and even 3D mesh. If you have something ‘technical’ like views or 3D, it makes easier to design the model. If not, you must be creative to say the least.
1966 Batmobile (http://paperinside.com/batman/1966-batmobile/), Mad Max Interceptor (http://paperinside.com/madmax/), Delorean(http://paperinside.com/delorean/) were the only ones I found technical information. All the others cars were from scratch.
What paper should your designs be printed on for the ideal result? Is there a particular weight and texture you design for?
The weight depends on the level of details. As a general rule, I recommend 90-120gsm paper for small parts (folks that means all your used office paper can be turned into star vehicles so save it and print Claudio’s patterns on the back) and 15-180gsm for bigger ones.
The final look of the car determines the texture. I use glossy paper for shiny cars. The Tumbler http://paperinside.com/batman/tumbler/), for example requires matte paper.
What is your favourite paper model to date?
Well, it’s not a car… It’s a robot that transforms into a car : Bumblebee (http://paperinside.com/bumblebee/)
Speaking of cars, the 1966 Batmobile. It’s my first model and it reminds me my childhood.
Has there been a car that you have tried but not been able to model in paper?
No. I’ve finished all models I’ve started. Perhaps, I keep distance from the impossible ones… A friend of mine once asked me to join him in a project – The Nemo’s car from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (see pic below). It’s a simple car, however those silver ornate details made me say NO to him. I know how to design them, but they’ll be very hard to assemble.
Which is saying a lot because the models we can download are pretty complex. Here, for instance is a page of the pattern for 1966 Batmobile. (image of Bat stuff)
And for the selfless, and health-conscious tot-toting readers, Claudio’s site www.paperinside.com also has models of PowderPuff Girls and Bruce the Shark which you can whip up for the young ‘uns safe in the knowledge that they are relatively chew friendly.
Visit the Asian Design scene here at ASIANLINE. We hope to include feeds and blogs from friends throughout this important region. Please send us your news and views to asianline @ sparkawards. com.
LETTERS FROM THE RING OF FIRE
Harrowing and heroic stories are reaching us from our Spark friends in Asia. We’ve posted several below. The first two are from Leimei Julia Chiu. Julia is the Executive Director of Japan’s Good Design Awards, and President-Elect of the ICOGRADA organization.
Julia—
I hope you and your loved ones are well. Please—when it is convenient—send Spark an update on the Japanese design community and the latest efforts regarding the calamities.
—Peter
4/15/11
Hello Peter and the Spark Community—
At times like this, one can not help feel very different perspectives about how we can reposition design so that the profession can really be of service to the weak, the poor and those in need.
It will be a long-term commitment and we will need to learn how to combine and share our expertise.
We really need to bring people from different disciplines to start thinking about how we could work together- to help communities rebuild their lives at transitional shelters and afterward.
We will need everyone to help with this huge task.
At JIDPO, we have shifted all our projects towards how design can help with community-rebuilding in the northeastern areas.
Please see: “How can designers support relief efforts in Japan?”
http://www.jidpo.or.jp/en/news/2011/0401.html
http://www.jidpo.or.jp/en/news/2011/0401_2.html
I am contacting major design awards from around the world to collect good case studies/products/services/systems that could be of use to the reconstruction efforts.
INDEX (Copenhagen), Design Forum Finland (Helsinki) will be working with us for this project as part of the collaboration and AIGA (U.S.A.) has been helping with this effort. Both are promoting design/architecture in all disciplines.
Israel Community of Designers has created a facebook page which permits designers to express solidarity:
http://www.facebook.com/designers4japan
Another idea is as follows:
I will be working with Niigata Prefecture which has also experienced an earthquake several years back. The government has a project to integrate craft industries, manufacturers and designers to develop new products each year.
Here’s the website:
http://www.nico.or.jp/hyaku/english/
This year, I will be the design manager to direct this initiative and I am thinking of setting the theme as follows: How can we design products and systems for a better living environment, where people have been displaced, and are trying to reorient themselves to build a new life from scratch?
We need ideas. The companies in Niigata will realize these ideas into real products/systems after one year.
with warmest regards
—Julia
3/17/2011
Subject: deepest gratitude from julia/ tokyo, japan
Dear everyone–
Thank you so much for all the encouragement and offer to help the design communities in Japan.
I am deeply, deeply touched and will try to answer all your messages individually.
I will stay put in Tokyo for now and try to work out some plans for how design associations in Japan can help with the long term reconstruction efforts in the areas heavily hit by the earthquake/Tsunami.
We will probably need support from the international design community. I will keep you updated as we progress with the planning.
We are having rolling blackouts in Tokyo area to cope with the energy shortage so it might take me some time to respond.
with warmest thoughts and a big, big hug from Tokyo
–julia
And we have this reflective note from teacher, reporter, Reverend and friend Jaime, currently across the Sea of Japan in Northern China
3/16/11
Jaime R. Vergara 
Special to the Saipan Tribune
Channel NewsAsia out of Singapore, along with CCTV 9 of Beijing, is following the unfolding crisis in Japan after the 9. Richter scale tremor, the strongest quake ever to shake the nation, and the subsequent tsunami that sent 10-meter-high waves 10 kilometers inland in Honshu, leaving the tarmac of the Sendai International Airport underwater, a local hospital still standing as the only refuge for some 300 persons in an area of collapsed structures, and 10,000 people from one village still remaining unaccounted for. The predictable aftershocks add damage and discomfort, but it is the threat of the nuclear meltdown of six reactors that is sending chills down everyone’s spine.
Not unlike humankind’s previous relationship to “flat earth,” which we now know to be spherical, and calling the experience of sundown as “sunset” when the earth actually turns, we never really consider land mass as floating tectonic plates on magma, but to appreciate how strong the earthquake in Japan was, the whole archipelago moved by a couple of meters and the axis of the planet itself shifted by a few centimeters!
Zen Japan is showing a remarkable face of solid calmness. News reports portray a nation intentionally going through the motions of a rehearsed drill in the midst of the surprising destruction that trails the wake of this disaster. The vaunted train system, one of the most sophisticated rails in the world that connects Kagoshima in south Kyushu to Wakkanai of north Hokkaido, shut down momentarily, along with its metro systems, at least in the urban centers of Honshu. Undaunted, people bought bicycles and pedaled home, while some just trudged and walked in the cold.
In 2002, we took a week-long retreat in late January before the cherry blossoms, taking the train from Narita to Sapporo in Hokkaido on the eastern corridor through Sendai, and returning on the western route through Akita and Niigata to West Tokyo. The cultivated and manicured countryside was a scene to behold, the tidiness of the trains and orderliness of its people a welcome respite from the hustle of crowd and mass humanity.
Although signs of juvenile vandalism-mainly graffiti-were evident in metro structures, the orderly Japan of our previous acquaintance, of nature both physical and societal disciplined into the level of art on terrain and population, was still very much and unmistakably alive! Majestic Mt. Fuji reigned as Hokusai’s rowers navigate the towering waves off Kanagawa in my sea of tranquility!
It is with deep appreciation that I recall that solitary week almost a decade ago, but as I watch today the deluge of painful unraveling that characterizes the Land of the Rising Sun, only the sound of silence is appropriate to express our profound sorrow of the innocent suffering unleashed.
A people’s tragedy, however, has awakened humanity’s empathy. Though its economy is one where its GNP far exceeds its GDP, showing barely any economic growth though ascending into international eminence, it has shown an economic arrangement where the concern for humanness matters. Japan projected a country with a human face.
Its virtues of simple elegance in cuisine and decor, lifestyle and landscape, custom and technology, its thrust toward moderation on all things in its post-WWII demeanor, has endeared it in many parts of the world; though it was saddled with the cruel memories of militarism, it also lived through the mushroom cloud brunt of Little Boy and Fat Man over the skies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The nation took this nuclear kamikaze and domesticated it for peaceful use. Now, the ice and the fire, the heat and the water, Mother Nature’s yin-yang elemental force comes calling on Nippon’s door again.
Presbyter and poet Ellie Stock wrote the following not too long ago:
What do I call what calls from the deeps,
that pulses through stars and quickens heart’s beat,
that surges through waves and cleanses with fire,
emerges from dust and breathes soul’s desire?
What do I name what mocks human pride,
that bends the tree of life, sustaining being’s tide?
It is with Zen calmness that we join Japan and the rest of the world in daring to give a name to that which emerges from the deeps, whether from the bowels of the earth, or from the deep abyss of the battered human soul.
The world joins that call of the deep as its K9s head for Tokyo to locate survivors. There is solidarity afoot in a world already grieved by the Gaddafis and the Tehrar Squares. But the ebb and flow of global reconciliation fills the air, and I, in my archaic season of Lent, smell the scent of transformation, in faith, hope and love. With T.S. Elliot and Zen calmness, I sing:
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well…
———————————————————–
BACK AT IT
Sorry folks– Not enough blogging going on around here! We’ve been consumed with an extremely busy competition season. It started getting hectic in September, with the Spark exhibition in Shanghai, during the Cumulous Design Educators Conference. 
Then, wham, we were slammed with all the pre-Spark deadline publicity–well, you probably experienced a bit of it. The Spark Jury finally convened in late October, and we all had a swell time. 
The Jury was Monday. The Awards Celebration and exhibition of winners was the following Friday. In between, all of the staff came down with a vicious bout of food poisoning. So things were a little out of sorts! Anyway we made it happen, the Spark party was fun and 2010 was a wrap.
Well, almost. For our final act, Spark Director Clark Kellogg and I went on a whirlwind tour of Korea, Taipei and Guangzhou. The Guangdong Industrial Design Association graciously invited Spark to mount an exhibition of the 2010 winners. The occasion was the GD Industrial Design Week. So this was both an honor and a pleasure. 
The GDDW Themes were Talent, Fusion, Industry and Cooperation. We were part of the Fusion Pavilion.
And the finished Pavilion glowed with your winning Sparks.
A pioneer of Chinese design, Prof. Tong Huimin, Director of the Guangzhou Academy of Art, came by to welcome us to GZ. Prof. Tong is a great friend of Spark and we always enjoy seeing him again.
A very interesting final stop on this tour brought us to the Taiwan Design Expo in Taipei. This was a show with lots of great student work, some incredible fabric and fashion design and some nifty electronics. Taiwan Design Center’s Vivian Wu and team filled us in on next October’s International Design Alliance Congress, and Spark’s contribution–hoping for something fresh and… Sparkly, please! (This show will be a doozy of a networking event. Don’t miss it.)
So ended a momentous year–and we lived through it! Back home we gave thanks, shoveled snow and rested up for the next round. All Best!
Poundbury – an essay in how not to design a new town
Poundbury is Prince Charles’ ‘exemplar’ urban environment, built on the edge of Dorset’s county town, Dorchester – in the UK. It is held up in some planning and design circles as a template for how we should design future towns, and in other circles it is ridiculed. As some of our contacts have been discussing it online in the last few days, I thought it would be appropriate to publish my perspective, in the form of a re-worked extract from my 2008 Royal College of Art Thesis – “The future of the car in the city”. The short essay follows:
Above: Pounbury streetscape – as seen from the green
Introduction
“It resembled an ancient relative to whom one was very close as a child, but who lacked any understanding of the adult whom circumstances had in the interim formed, whether for better or worse.”
Alain De Botton’s withering description of Poundbury village – a recent extension to the town of Dorchester in Dorset, is typical of those made by both mainstream and architectural media following the opening of Prince Charles’s ‘model’ town.
For many it is purely the architectural form that proves to be Poundbury’s undoing, but the most interesting aspect of this place – and what makes it a worthwhile study, is its urban design principles and attitude towards the car – both in terms of the theories and ideologies its designers used, and in the physical manifestation of the place itself.
Background and history
Poundbury exists today primarily thanks to HRH Prince Charles – the Duchy of Cornwall. His views on architecture, and how in turn the architecture profession has received this, can be read elsewhere. What specifically interested me was that Poundbury’s “…entire masterplan was based upon placing the pedestrian, and not the car, at the centre of the design.” To understand the relevance of Poundbury when considering the relationship between urban environments and the car, it is necessary though, not to focus on Poundbury’s visionary Prince Charles, but Leon Krier – Charles’s masterplanner, and New Urbanist.
Krier’s book – ‘Architecture: choice or fate?’ – sets out the principles that form the basis of New Urbanist theory which he employs at Poundbury. Not a fan of large, modern, metropolitan cities – he argues that they develop in problematic ways – nor Suburban sprawl, Krier instead suggests a model of ‘the city within the city’. These are smaller urban villages, situated close to one another, yet that don’t physically connect. The intention is to “re-establish a precise dialectic between city and countryside.”
Poundbury embodies these ideals, situated approximately two kilometers from the heart of Dorchester town centre. In between the two is a less dense, greener, urban ‘strip’. The place is split into four quarters, being built in phases (currently only phases one and two have been completed). Each quarter comprises it’s own mini-centre – a square intended as a focal point, for people, rather than cars.
Above: Pounbury schematic layout in relation to Dorchester, as I see it
Experience
Yet visiting Poundbury and observing how people actually live there, reveals deep flaws in Krier and Charles’ model. Poundbury feels like a village that has not yet been through the industrial revolution – yet (paradoxically) it feels dominated by the car. The central squares are not ‘people’ places – they are car parks. The streets around them are deserted of both people and vehicles. Ultimately, you discover the cars have been shoved out of the way, into back alley muses containing nothing but garages, eating up acres of space. The result is that both streets and courtyards are devoid of life and feel soulless.
Walking through Poundbury is analogous to Jim Carey’s chatacter in the Truman show. Life feels somewhat fake. In part, this is unsurprising – The Truman show was based on and filmed in Seaside, Florida which was designed by the ‘fathers’ of New Urbanism – Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and a place which Krier speaks about enthusiastically in his book.
Ultimately, despite being planned as “…a high-density urban quarter of Dorchester which gives priority to people, rather than cars, and where commercial buildings are mixed with residential areas, shops and leisure facilities to create a walkable community”, Poundbury’s fails in three key areas, expanded upon below:
• Services
Richard Rogers argues that for a place to be truly ‘walkable’ one needs the ability to work, live, play, (by inference meet people, eat, shop, entertain and be entertained) within the same (1 mile or so?) area. Although Poundbury was developed as a mixed-use community, as one might expect, many of the people who live there do not work here, and vice-versa. Likewise, the keystone services and amenities taken for granted in cities and towns – the supermarket, cafes, bars, a cinema, restaurants, educational and academic institutions, gyms, theatres, a take-away, a library or bookshop – simply do not exist in Poundbury. Poundbury has a high end hi-fi store, three wedding and bridal shops, and a ‘Budgens’ mini-mart shop masquerading as “Poundbury Village Stores”. Bluntly, being denied the amenities modern people and modern life require, strangulates Poundbury.
• Accessibility
If the designers had truly wanted the residents of Poundbury to use their cars less, then would it not have been more pertinent to explore and create better links, pathways and services between two of the places which Poundbury residents might most frequently be predicted to need access – Dorchester and the nearby Tesco’s supermarket? The supermarket sits only 1.4 km away as the crow flies (fig.26), but there is no path, no route for pedestrians, or other vehicles – so almost everyone drives there, as the supermarket is just around the ring road. Dorchester itself is 1.6 km from Poundbury’s central square. These distances (around 1 mile), equate to around 20 minutes walking time – too great a distance and time to prevent time-pressed people from using their cars. Alternatives options to jumping in the car are needed, and they are notable by their absence.
Above: an annotated aerial view of Poundbury with key landmarks and POIs in Dorchester marked
• Parking and streetscape
This area is the one Poundbury comes closest to getting right. However, some short-sighted ideas, and odd implementation, create issues. Krier is right for suggesting, “The speed of vehicles should be controlled not by signs and technical gadgets (humps, traffic islands, crash barriers, traffic lights, etc.) but by civic and urban character of streets that is created by their geometric configuration, their profile, paving, planting, lighting, street furniture, and architecture.”
Yet somewhere between drawing board and physicality, things have gone wrong. Poundbury does feature narrow, winding streets with ‘dropped kerbs’ that seem to discourage cars drivers from traveling particularly quickly. At the same time however, its lack of real hierarchy and distinction in building types – and the apparent desire to completely remove street signage, or implement any technology – means that the place does, to use his words about certain other places “demonstrate [its] unique capacity to disorientate, confuse…” Poundbury isn’t readable; it isn’t legible to an outsider.
Parking is worse still. The overarching desire to maintain ‘order’ – for everything, including the car – and to be neat and tidy, seems to have created issues when it comes to dealing with where to put stationary vehicles, and how much space they are allowed. Vast parking mews at the rear of houses tends to keep vehicles off the main road, but the benefit of this is questionable. The garage mews take up enormous space in the areas behind houses, occupying huge tracts of land that in ‘real’ cities simply isn’t there. Squares and courtyards have no focus, no life, and where there is some focus like a shop, simply become car parks.
Above: one of the many garage mews, which take up acerages of space in Poundbury
If the intention was to put pedestrians (or even cyclists and other small vehicles) first, Poundbury might have looked at employing the incredibly successful ‘Woonerf’ system seen in Holland – which limit the space for cars on residential streets – and makes the street-spaces vibrant, safe environments in which children can – and do – play. Might it not have been better to move the cars out to two, maybe three main ‘areas’ on the edge of the development? But then this would raise the prospect of creating multi-story car parks, which Krier criticizes for little good reason, but at great length, in what he has written.
Conclusion
Poundbury is an interesting example of an attempt to build a new development in the early twenty-first century. Objectively, its failure is not down to the plain-to-see distaste for modern, nee modernist architecture which its facades embody, and for which it is most commonly criticised. Instead it is the failure to provide any vision or any excitement, about how the future of urban environments might be, and how people and vehicles might move around and share space, that disappoints most. Worryingly, for a place that is intended as a counterpoint to sprawl and overcoming car dependency, Poundbury provides little in the way of a blueprint for how things could be done.
It is also a lesson in why not to look at mobility as only being about cars, and why a creeping agenda of discouraging or limiting movement and mobility could be dangerous. Should others try to ape Poundbury’s developers, they too risk becoming preoccupied with trying to create well meaning solutions that don’t take into account the needs and desires of modern lives. One hope that if future developments try to counteract the car and its impact, they don’t forget about other forms of private mobility, which can complement or repurpose traditional cars. Sadly, for all the anti-car bluster, there is not a hint of a cycle lane, a bike park, a PRT system, a car-share scheme or a Segway to be found here.
An opportunity has been missed here, because of a refusal to embrace and experiment with new ideas, technologies, and products. This place could, and should have been an exemplar or a test bed in how we might live and move in the future. Instead, what best encapsulates the failures of Poundbury is this: its inhabitants appear condemned to a life on Dorchester’s ringroad, traveling to a big-box Tesco’s store, built on a greenfield site, in a car that weighs twenty times their weight, and typically has three empty seats.
One can only hope that those tasked with helping shape future towns and cities – both in the UK and abroad – who are now bussed to this place to ‘learn’ from it as some kind of example, recognise its failures and don’t condemn the inhabitants of their future towns to the same fate.
Published by Joseph Simpson on 17th February 2010
Some notes and information on this piece:
This piece is an adaptation from part of Joseph Simpson’s Thesis “The future of the car in the city” – Royal College of Art, June 2008. A full set of references for this piece are available on request, but are not included here in our usual hyperlink fashion as they mainly refer to offline sources.
The piece is not creative commons licensed in the way our usual pieces are, as it is subject to some copy right from The Royal College of Art. Please contact me if you would like to use or reference it so that I can grant permission. A copy of the original piece in pdf format is available on request.
Joseph Simpson visited Poundbury in October 2007
Blog courtesy of RE*MOVE http://movementbureau.blogs.com/projects/
February 17, 2010 in architecture, Cities, Design, Leon Krier, Observations, Parking, Poundbury, Prince Charles, Sustainability, urban design | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
FREE: The Web as Big Box Retailer
P.ARCH is the hotspot for Public Architecture, urban planning and design. P.ARCH highlights the potential of the design community to be a force for positive change in the civic sphere. Please send us your news and views to p.arch @ sparkawards. com. continue reading…
Where — and how are you going into our bright future? We love and design fast cars and slow, big engines and small, gas, hydrogen, electric, 4 wheels–more or less– trucks, trains, planes, and dig plenty of efficiency and sustainability. We even have a lobbyist for capacitors! Please send us your news and views to going @ sparkawards. com.
Contributors include Sally Dominguez, Dan Sturges, Dave Muyres, Mark Charmer and Joe Simpson. Gentlefolk, start your powerplants!
Pedal Power
Sally Dominguez Driving the Green Line, Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald
A few years ago a mate and I decided to make our fortunes with a silicone driving sock we named Foot Franger. The Franger would sit rolled up in the door pocket ready for use and its rough-rider-style rubber grip would ensure the contained foot stuck to the pedal. When I sought research to determine whether a thin sock was safer drivewear than sneakers or riding boots I came up blank: seems there is a lot of speculation but very little published fact on the co-operation of shoes and car pedals. Foot Franger was relegated to the backburner.
Suddenly a four-million-car recall by the world’s largest manufacturer has turned table talk to the otherwise unremarkable topic of car pedals. Rogue floor mats may be Toyota’s pedal diddlers, but off the record plenty of pedal near-misses closer to home have happened to drivers via their unpredictable footwear, whether its flip-flips bending under the brake pedal, mules snagging the clutch or Crocs coming off completely. Accident statistics don’t list the footwear involved and regulations rarely attempt to intervene but if you do regard your shoes as reckless, consider the quandary of driving unshod. Is it legal to drive in bare feet? (yes it often is, unless you are driving in Hong Kong). Is it comfortable to drive in bare feet? (try the Dr Scholl-like feel of the Honda Type R’s rubber studs before you answer), safer to drive in bare feet? (Brazil apparently thinks so, at least when compared to driving in “slippers or clogs”).
Any conversation regarding appropriate driving footwear inevitably reaches driving in heels. Its not illegal and apparently one in four women do it – that’s around 2.6 million Australians – yet most people regard it as unsafe and no vehicle directly addresses the very different mechanical action of an angled foot and elevated ankle on the pedal of a car. The International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors suggests that an accelerator pedal be angled between 35 and 45 degrees (depends on seat height) to control the amount of force exerted from driver to pedal. The force on the pedal is also controlled by my the angle of thrust – higher seats create a downward pressure on a pedal, and the lower the seat the more forward motion comes into play. The good Encyclopedia notes that pressure feedback from the foot “can be largely masked by footwear”. Since even a 3cm boot heel substantially changes the angle of the foot, the area of foot brought to bear on the pedal, and the thrusting movement of the foot, men in Cuban heels are as compromised as boot-skootin’ gals by the average car pedal.
Heel guards on the driver side foot mats were pioneered by Carla Zampatti in her 
1985 Ford Laser interior to prevent wear and tear at the back of the driver’s shoe. This design feature is now fairly common, suggesting that many auto makers know women drive in dress shoes and just haven’t tweaked their engineering to suit. Things are changing however, at least at Ford where a recent chat with Bob Coury, Core Vehicle Architecture Supervisor at Ford headquarters revealed a new, innovative approach to the ergonomic design of pedals.
Bob was the lead engineer responsible for introducing adjustable pedals to Ford vehicles via the Territory (Expedition to Bob) in 2003. Adjustable pedals had been around in concept cars since the 1950s, allowing driver access into difficult and restricted cockpits. In 1971 the Maserati Bora pioneered adjustable pedals in a production car courtesy of hydraulics by Citroen. French auto makers ran with this trend yet oddly, at a time when almost every part of a car can be automatically tweaked to suit, movable pedal boxes remain largely an under-utilized after-market add on for the rest of us. Not so for Ford. The 1996 Dodge Viper had used adjustable pedals to deal with a cramped foot area and Bob rigged up a prototype electric pedal box for his Boss’s Mustang to demonstrate their usefulness. When the 5’1 wife of the 6’5 boss used the moveable pedals she deemed them essential and the electric adjustable pedal box was born.
In itself the adjustable pedal box represents safety progress for the vertically-challenged because it allows short drivers to sit further away from the wheel – and the airbag – and still remain in control of their vehicle. Pedal extenders in various strange forms are the after-market alternative to adjustable pedals – studies suggest they are commonly used by female bus drivers – although these would conceivable completely change the force of foot on brake and create a Thunderbirds puppet-like pedaling effect. As race driver Amanda Hennessy notes “the trick is to keep the heel planted and roll the foot” – easily done in flats, harder in heels, downright tricky on stilts.
But Ford’s pedal innovation does not end at adjustability. Bob acknowledges that car companies model their CAD pedal calculations based on averages and percentiles, always assuming that the driver is wearing shoes but never inputting data on the shoe other than its size (some morph between Women’s 7 and Men’s 13). As Bob saw it his team knew that a successful pedal design was more than angle and anatomy, but “ struggled with the time, energy and research needed. We didn’t have the manpower or the money – so we did some creative thinking”.
In 2008 Ford employed a shoe industry consultant to supply them with the facts and figures normally used to stock a store: the most common sizes, and the proportion of sandals to stilettos to snow boots. User types were input into the database with pickups weighted towards boots and mustangs and minivans deemed more heel-friendly. Armed with an extensive matrix of sizes and shoe types, Ford is venturing where no other auto maker has gone in tailoring pedals to the reality of shoes. 
Today’s cars offer every mod con from heated seats to DVDs – some even accommodate a ponytail in the headrest. Compared to a heel-compatible, adjustable pedal my Foot Franger doesn’t rate for driver convenience.
As Carla Zampatti says, “ I always drive in high heels. I don’t have time to change my shoes”.
Finding meaning in Frankfurt – 2009 auto show review
What will the 2009 Frankfurt auto show be remembered for? While you’ve probably read it was all about electric cars, that misses the bigger story from the Messe show floor. This was the moment the auto industry got its mojo back.
Whether this sense of optimism is misplaced (especially when you take into account that scrappage schemes across Europe seem likely to end soon), only time will tell. For now, it serves as an antidote to the damp-squib of Geneva 2009, which was sorely needed.
Carlos Ghosn says “the time for change is now”, introducing four Renault EV (or Z.E.) concepts
Back at the turn of the year, people like Renault-Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn were saying things like “I can’t even predict what’s going to happen next month, so don’t ask me about plans for 2010”. In Frankfurt, he assuredly hung Renault’s future on EVs, saying “the time to act is now” before unveiling four electric car concepts, and promising they’d all land by 2012. Whether consumers want them is now the 64 billion dollar question. Should the answer be a full-on no, Renault’s on a very slippery slope. If yes, its alliance with Nissan is extremely well positioned, backed up by its infrastructure partner, Better Place – who placed an order for 100,000 electric Renault’s on the first day of the show.
Alongside Renault’s offerings, BMW was a shoe in for car of the show with the Vision Efficient Dynamics concept. Pictures leaking out prior to the show’s opening didn’t diminish its impact in the flesh, and no-one has missed its relevance to the future of BMW’s M Performance division – previewing a future for high-performance cars in a carbon-constrained world. It’s a great halo car for the Efficient Dynamics campaign, too (which incidentally, is much smarter than the cheesy, over-arching new brand slogan, “Joy”).
BMW’s Vision Efficient Dynamics concept, looked terrific from this angle
Ferrari’s 458 Italia was the prettiest looking core-model Ferrari since 1994’s 355. The stunningly executed Rolls Royce’s Ghost showed Bentley’s Mulsanne the way in elegance terms, showcasing some particularly fine English craftsmanship – check out those door inners, and ingot-like door handles.
Rolls Royce Ghost doors
Lexus and Saab still disappoint. The Lf-Ch was predictable – somehow feeling a little too close to Toyota’s similar sized cars in its execution, and bringing little new to the premium C-segment dominated by the Audi A3 and BMW 1 Series. SAAB’s 9-5 doesn’t really stand cross-examination against Audi or BMW either. While a welcome new product on a stand starved of product under GM, it suffers from a slightly dated feeling (not surprising really, as its design was signed off some time ago). We wonder how – and if – things will change for SAAB under Koenigsegg.
Citroen Revolte’s interior raised a few eyebrows
Citroen’s ReVolte was much talked about before the show as being a modern interpretation of the 2CV. Yet for all the talk of plundering a heritage line, this was Citroen having a bit of fun. Drawing inspiration from a certain section of Parisian society, the interior takes on the feeling of a boudoir in the rear (crushed red velvet) and clashes it against an integral rear-facing child seat and hi-tech, pilot-like driver’s chair. If nothing else, it made us smirk, and provided an amusingly playful contrast to the seriousness of the Germans.
Sister brand Peugeot produced an intriguing concept in the form of the BB1. A sub-Smart sized city car, the BB1 actually seats four, although they may want to be more than just good friends with one another before all climbing aboard. Cleverly for a product that in size approaches something many might hesitate to classify as a car, there is strong use and reference made to Peugeot’s road bike heritage (bike inspired front seat perches, bike-based driving controls). It felt like an authentic gap-bridging vehicle between car and bike. We expect to see much more of this type of thing aimed at the urban populations of mega cities. Certainly Renault’s Twizy appears to be just that, too. It provides an interesting contrast to the BB1, being physically smaller but designed to imbue the driver with the sensation that they are in a real car, in a way the Peugeot passes over.
Four passengers in the Peugeot BB1 – they’re all good friends…
Favourite vehicle of all for me was the VW L1. Some explanation is appropriate here. Last year I finished an MPhil at the RCA, and my final project was a VW-branded city car, arranged in a tandem formation, and in part inspired by the 2002 1 Litre concept – brainchild of Ferdinand Piech. For many reasons, a very aerodynamic, light, narrow, tandem format car makes sense for our future world.
VW L1
Yet just eighteen months ago (when completing my project) I thought VW had shelved the 1 litre. It was a Piech pet project, and featured rocket science tech that was too expensive, too weirdly packaged to ever see the light of day in a production car. Never underestimate Ferdinand Piech is the message to take from this… more than ever, he’s very much in charge – and in the seven years since the original 1-litre car, the production techniques and cost of making its carbon fibre monocoque have fallen. Meanwhile, the two-cylinder diesel motor has entered the realms of economic reality too – as it’s likely to be pressed into service under the hoods of future Up! and possibly even Polo models, as the internal combustion world continues to downsize. So the L1 is very much set for future production according to VW.
The headline is that the L1 has a drag factor of just 0.195cd (the lowest I’ve heard of – and for comparison, today’s best the Prius, is 0.25), and weighs under 400kg – the monocoque accounting for a scarcely credible 65kg of that. But after talking to designer Maximillian Missoni, there’s a sense that the real achievement has been to create a beautifully spare exterior style, reflecting the purity of purpose in the engineering, with design language that is recognizably VW, and acceptably car-like.
The low cockpit, and side-hinged canopy enclosure make sitting in the L1 feel more akin to piloting a fighter jet than merely driving a car, an idea that is intentional. The design theme was inspired by aeronautics, and intended to convey a sense of speed. More than that though, Missoni says that there was a desire to create a positive sense of drama and forward thinking here “you want to be able to drive up in front of a restaurant, and not feel embarrassed, you want to feel “I’m a pioneer’”.
Compare this to the other future we’re presented with; the forgettable, dumpy forms of the Prius or Leaf – essentially the cars we have today with new powertrains underneath. There’s much merit to what these cars have done to condition markets and move consumer’s mindset. Yet there’s also evidence that – from both an environmental perspective, and an urban mobility one – we need to go further, rethink some first principles. For me, the L1 is that car, it shows a really different way forward – in a positive way. VW’s a huge car maker, but it’s proving that size isn’t a hindrance to thinking differently.
So while the Prius may be a green darling, and its current iteration reputedly very good, the VW is – in many regards – much more elegant when viewed from a holistic design and engineering point of view. Of course, you won’t be able to fit a family of four and the dog in an L1, so many will dismiss it. But think about how often you travel alone, or with just one other – and think about how menial a task day-to-day driving has become. The L1 shakes those ideas up, and says that the future could be different, but the future could have a real sense of adventure, a sense of fun about it. If VW is truly saying that a car as pioneering as this can now be produced, at a cost those pioneering individuals can afford, then it suggests there is every reason to be optimistic about the future – of not only the car, but of how we can push the boundaries of travel itself within the constraints of the world today.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 23rd September 2009
Four Minutes In Frankfurt–Video
Are You Electric?
The NYTimes reports a different, perhaps more confident mood among would-be electric vehicle makers. What do you think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/automobiles/14electric.html?ref=business
The last 12 months of auto design – our favorites
August 24, 2009 by Joe Simpson, with Mark Charmer
We returned from France a few days ago to find Robb and Mark discussing the last 12 months of cars and car design, because they were thinking about which ones ought to be entered into the upcoming Spark design Awards.
While the auto industry’s been in the doldrums for some time now, Spark Awards provides an opportune moment to take a look at some of the more interesting cars, concepts and automotive details of recent times. So without further ado, here’s a scratch list of some Simpson favourites…
Designed years ago, but then dumped in a secret hanger until such time when BMW needed an on-demand concept to unveil (the opening of BMW-Welt proved to be just such an occasion), BMW’s Gina is arguably the single most innovative thing to have happened in auto design for years. As its mastermind Chris Bangle remarked at unveiling “what do we need the skin of a car for anyway? What is it made out of? Does it have to be made of metal?” Too few ‘what if’ questions are asked in the auto world, and the moments that they do happen are typically hidden from public view – as this one was for so long. But we’re glad it finally saw the light of day, and that like all the best concepts it asks more questions than it answers.
In a world where even family hatchbacks are competing to set the fastest time in the class around the Nurburgring, Nissan offers a leftfield approach. The Cube has been around in Japan for years, but now Europe and the US are getting the second generation. Why? Nissan realise that most drivers aren’t interested in the minutae of cornering finesse, or top speed; they’re interested in something that manages to provide huge utility, but have personality at the same time. The Cube has both in spades. Essentially a box-on-wheels, it features a ‘sun and moon’ set of dials, ‘curvy wave’ seating, and asymmetric styling in the shape of one side rear window turning around the corner into the rear windshield. When he had one on test recently, Michael Banovsky noted “I feel awful leaving the cube downstairs at night. He looks so sad”. It’s the kind of car that elicits such feelings. Jean Jennings, Automobile Magazine and long-time Spark friend, raved about it to us recently, too.
They’re by no means universally loved, nor were Audi first to introduce LED headlight technology, but through smart design strategy and brilliant detailed execution, Audi have taken ownership of the LED headlight. Subtly different on the R8, A6, A5 and A4, the wavy bands of bright white lights, piercing through the daylight when in DRL mode, are now as much an Audi identification hallmark as the shield grille and four rings – leaving you in no doubt as to just which type of car is behind you, and would like you to move over, thank you very much…
Electric and hybrid cars need to look apologetic and dumpy don’t they? Ergo, all cars of tomorrow will look like the Prius, right? Wrong! Pininfarina, the Italian design house better known for styling Ferraris, took the unusual step of developing their own-brand car, in conjunction with French battery maker Bollore, to showcase a small, electric city car. At its unveil at last autumn’s Paris auto show, words like ‘cute’ and ‘funky’ were the order of the day. Pininfarina even put solar panels where the radiator grille would have been (because it doesn’t need one), and showcased an interior whose design picks up where their brilliant Sintesi concept left off. All in all, this ought to be the car that moves the game on beyond Prius.
Just under a year ago, Ford was smarting from being (wrongly) lumped in with GM and Chrysler over auto bailout shenanigans in the US. The perception was that the US auto industry didn’t do green, because it didn’t make a Prius competitor. Step forward the Fusion Hybrid, a car which drives just like a regular car, looks like one, but gets better gas mileage than any other hybrid in its sector. But all of this wasn’t really the reason for excitement. No, it was the Fusion Hybrid’s Smartgauge cluster – a four-way configurable digital instrument panel, which helps drivers to get the best economy from the vehicle. Using ethnographic research done with IDEO, Ford have come up with a system that adds layers of complexity and information as drivers learn and want to know more about how their activity affects economy. Ultimately, it just makes the car more engaging and fun to drive… and I never thought I’d write those words about a hybrid.
Arguably as innovative as the Gina, the iQ is a sub-3m long city car, which (at a squeeze) seats four, can turn on a six-pence, and yet will let you walk away from a 40mph crash alive. The Prius is often lauded as Toyota’s greatest engineering achievement – but this car trumps it. Among other things, Toyota completely rethought and redesigned the air conditioning and HVAC system to take up less space, remodeled how the steering rack / differential / front axle arrangement worked allowing the distance from front wheel to driver to be reduced, and built a fuel tank to fill the (tiny) few spare spaces they had left under the passenger compartment. It out-smarts the Smart car in one move. Shame Aston Martin want to do crazy things to the whole concept…
A lot of people criticise Honda’s new Insight, but it can be applauded for an approach which – rather than adding complexity, which is inherent to most hybrid cars – seeks to simplify. So the electric motor and hybrid system is smaller, simpler, sitting like a ‘pancake’ behind the engine. And rather than the all-singing, all-dancing driver displays found in some hybrids, the Insight keeps you driving economically with a really simple piece of design. The digital speed display, sitting at the base of the windscreen and in the driver’s line of sight, simply glows green when you’re driving economically, and goes purpley-blue when you’re being lead-footed.
Changes are afoot at Volvo. Ford is keen to sell its Swedish subsiduary. Steve Mattin – the chief designer – left suddenly, and now one of the blue oval’s top designers, Peter Horbury – who made his name at the Swedish firm, is returning to head up the design team. If he gets the next S60 into production looking anything like the concept car unveiled at January’s Detroit auto show, there’ll be lots of happy people in Gothenberg. Not only did the S60 concept look sleek and fast, but it had an interior of such jaw-dropping beauty and detail design attention, that it was many people’s star of the show. Criticised for deserting its Swedish roots under the stewardship of Ford, the S60 emphatically hit back, featuring a huge chunk of glass dashboard that flowed between the seats and into the back of the car. Done in conjunction with Swedish glass firm Orrefors, the end result was an interior that embodied everything great about Scandinavian interior design values, and felt as Swedish as Abba, but a damn site classier.
What do you think? Lists tend to create disagreement, so let the debate begin! What blindingly obvious thing have I omitted? Ultimately, there’s nothing too out of the ordinary here. No Tesla. No Aptera. No Jetsons-esque flying cars that start to creep into the kind of ‘reality’ one expects to see South Park satirizing. The auto industry doesn’t do ‘innovation’ in a way that’s highly visible, or that changes the world, very often. In fact, it’s largely still doing things the way Henry Ford did 100 years ago, which many argue is why it’s in the state it finds itself today. Yet for some (and I include myself here), it’s possible to take delight in the new models, and the little details which showcase the behind-the-scene hours spent by engineers and designers, who’ve dedicated their lives to shaving off a kilogramme of weight here, or an inch of unnecessary flab there.
It’s the little things, those moments where you’re made to feel ‘someone in the development team thought about me’, that still ultimately make cars the special, coveted objects that they are today.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 19th August 2009
Disclosure – Ford is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau’s design and research work in 2009, Honda provided an Insight test car free of charge for review purposes.
Images: BMW Gina – Steve.Jackson, Nissan Cube – winni3, Audi A5 – philippluecke, Pininfarina Bluecar, Ford Smartgauge, Honda Insight – all Joseph Simpson, Toyota iQ – Mark Charmer, Volvo S60 – potatowedge
LAUNCHPAD
July 1, 2009 by Peter Kuchnicki
It’s appropriate to launch the GOING blog with a launch by friend and Spark Council member, Tom Matano. 
Tom is also Director, School Of Industrial Design for the Academy of Art University and ex-chief of Mazda Design. In a somewhat cryptic PR from LED (Louisiana Economic Development), plans are outlined for a new eco-car, designed by Tom and an impressive team. When I asked Tom “What else can we put in the GOING blog about this? How about sharing some design guidance, mission, drivetrain, etc?” Tom responded, “Unfortunately, I can’t give you any more than that the plant site has been selected… If this goes as planned, it will be another ICON like Miata has become.”
We’re rooting for you, Matano. And dig the VC masters of the universe-types behind this startup. Watch out Elon! Here’s most of the PR:
RELEASE: Louisiana Economic Development
V-Vehicle Company, or VVC, is a new American car company that will produce a high-quality and fuel efficient car for the U.S. market. Its goal is to provide the American car buyer greater product value and a superior automotive experience. By designing and building its cars in the U.S., VVC wants to help re-establish American leadership in the global automotive industry.
• VVC was founded in 2006 by Frank Varasano, a former Oracle Corp. and Booz Allen Hamilton executive. The vehicle design team is led by Tom Matano, who is best known as the “father of the Miata,” which was recently named the “most iconic” car of the past 25 years by BusinessWeek.
Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., VVC intends to locate its first manufacturing facility in Monroe, La.
First Plant Location Selected
• VVC selected Monroe, La., as its first plant site after an extensive and competitive, multistate evaluation of potential candidates against a detailed list of critical factors. Key to its decision was the availability of an existing facility, the quality of the labor pool, its confidence in the state and local leadership and a creative incentive package developed by the Louisiana Economic Development team that addressed core needs and provided value where it was most needed. KPMG advised VVC in the selection process and CBRE acted as real estate broker.
• VVC plans to renovate, retool and expand the former Guide headlamp facility in Monroe, approximately doubling its size with the addition of about 325,000 square feet of production space. The construction project is expected to begin later this summer. Gray Construction of Lexington, Ky., has been chosen to design, engineer and supervise the project. CKGP/PW & Associates of Troy, Mich., will provide process and manufacturing engineering support. Both organizations have impressive resumes in automotive plant design and construction.
• Once completed and at full capacity, the Monroe facility will employ over 1,400 workers. The majority of these workers will be employed by VVC, with approximately one-third employed by several colocated supplier companies. VVC intends to take full advantage of the Louisiana FastStart™ program to help recruit, screen and train a world-class workforce. Production hiring is expected to begin in the summer of 2010.
V-Vehicle Company Funding In Place
• VVC has been funded thus far by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, or KPCB, under the stewardship of VVC board members and KPCB partners Ray Lane and John Doerr. KPCB is one of the world’s leading venture capital companies, with success stories including Genentech, Amazon, Compaq and Sun Microsystems. VVC and KPCB are currently in the process of closing a second round of equity funding.
• VVC has applied for engineering and manufacturing loans under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, a $25 billion loan program established by Congress in 2007 and administered by the U.S. Department of Energy to spur innovation in automobile technology.
For more information, visit www.OpportunityLouisiana.com.
BIOGRAPHIES
V-Vehicle Company Selected Investors & Executives
John Doerr
Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
“V-Vehicle Company coming to Louisiana, I think, is a great statement and a great catalyst for all kinds of new, innovative economic opportunities.”
Ray Lane
Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
“The thing that excites me the most about V-Vehicle is that it is a holistic change, so we’re thinking about – from beginning to end – how to reconstruct a car company.”
Horst Metz
Vice President – Assembly Operations, V-Vehicle Company
“Designing a car in America, building a car in America, selling the car in America – we’re going to show that it can be done.”
T. Boone Pickens
Founder and Chairman, BP Capital Management
“I’m excited to be an investor… and I believe that the automobile industry will survive in America, but it won’t look like it did in the past.”
Frank Varasano
Founder and CEO, V-Vehicle Company
“Our vision for a new American car company is coming to life here in Monroe, La.”
Tom Matano
Director of Design, V-Vehicle Company
“My belief is to do a good design that lasts longer. It’ll make people happy.” Tom Matano has 30 years of experience in the automotive design industry. In addition to his responsibilities at VVC, he serves as the executive director of the School of Industrial Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Matano joined Mazda in 1983 and progressed through numerous design positions, ultimately becoming general manager of Mazda Design, with responsibility for the chief designers’ group that created Mazda’s entire line of car designs, as well as the European and North American studios. His accomplishments at Mazda include the MX-5, the RX-7, the 929 Miata “M-Coupe” concept car and many other projects by the design teams he managed and created. Earlier in his career, he held design positions at General Motors and BMW.
Pedal Power
Sally Dominguez Driving the Green Line
Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald
A few years ago a mate and I decided to make our fortunes with a silicone driving sock we named Foot Franger. The Franger would sit rolled up in the door pocket ready for use and its rough-rider-style rubber grip would ensure the contained foot stuck to the pedal. When I sought research to determine whether a thin sock was safer drivewear than sneakers or riding boots I came up blank: seems there is a lot of speculation but very little published fact on the co-operation of shoes and car pedals. Foot Franger was relegated to the backburner.
Suddenly a four-million-car recall by the world’s largest manufacturer has turned table talk to the otherwise unremarkable topic of car pedals. Rogue floor mats may be Toyota’s pedal diddlers, but off the record plenty of pedal near-misses closer to home have happened to drivers via their unpredictable footwear, whether its flip-flips bending under the brake pedal, mules snagging the clutch or Crocs coming off completely. Accident statistics don’t list the footwear involved and regulations rarely attempt to intervene but if you do regard your shoes as reckless, consider the quandary of driving unshod. Is it legal to drive in bare feet? (yes it often is, unless you are driving in Hong Kong). Is it comfortable to drive in bare feet? (try the Dr Scholl-like feel of the Honda Type R’s rubber studs before you answer), safer to drive in bare feet? (Brazil apparently thinks so, at least when compared to driving in “slippers or clogs”).
Any conversation regarding appropriate driving footwear inevitably reaches driving in heels. Its not illegal and apparently one in four women do it – that’s around 2.6 million Australians – yet most people regard it as unsafe and no vehicle directly addresses the very different mechanical action of an angled foot and elevated ankle on the pedal of a car. The International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors suggests that an accelerator pedal be angled between 35 and 45 degrees (depends on seat height) to control the amount of force exerted from driver to pedal. The force on the pedal is also controlled by my the angle of thrust – higher seats create a downward pressure on a pedal, and the lower the seat the more forward motion comes into play. The good Encyclopedia notes that pressure feedback from the foot “can be largely masked by footwear”. Since even a 3cm boot heel substantially changes the angle of the foot, the area of foot brought to bear on the pedal, and the thrusting movement of the foot, men in Cuban heels are as compromised as boot-skootin’ gals by the average car pedal.
Heel guards on the driver side foot mats were pioneered by Carla Zampatti in her 1985 Ford Laser interior to prevent wear and tear at the back of the driver’s shoe. This design feature is now fairly common, suggesting that many auto makers know women drive in dress shoes and just haven’t tweaked their engineering to suit. Things are changing however, at least at Ford where a recent chat with Bob Coury, Core Vehicle Architecture Supervisor at Ford headquarters revealed a new, innovative approach to the ergonomic design of pedals.
Bob was the lead engineer responsible for introducing adjustable pedals to Ford vehicles via the Territory (Expedition to Bob) in 2003. Adjustable pedals had been around in concept cars since the 1950s, allowing driver access into difficult and restricted cockpits. In 1971 the Maserati Bora pioneered adjustable pedals in a production car courtesy of hydraulics by Citroen. French auto makers ran with this trend yet oddly, at a time when almost every part of a car can be automatically tweaked to suit, movable pedal boxes remain largely an under-utilized after-market add on for the rest of us. Not so for Ford. The 1996 Dodge Viper had used adjustable pedals to deal with a cramped foot area and Bob rigged up a prototype electric pedal box for his Boss’s Mustang to demonstrate their usefulness. When the 5’1 wife of the 6’5 boss used the moveable pedals she deemed them essential and the electric adjustable pedal box was born.
In itself the adjustable pedal box represents safety progress for the vertically-challenged because it allows short drivers to sit further away from the wheel – and the airbag – and still remain in control of their vehicle. Pedal extenders in various strange forms are the after-market alternative to adjustable pedals – studies suggest they are commonly used by female bus drivers – although these would conceivable completely change the force of foot on brake and create a Thunderbirds puppet-like pedaling effect. As race driver Amanda Hennessy notes “the trick is to keep the heel planted and roll the foot” – easily done in flats, harder in heels, downright tricky on stilts.
But Ford’s pedal innovation does not end at adjustability. Bob acknowledges that car companies model their CAD pedal calculations based on averages and percentiles, always assuming that the driver is wearing shoes but never inputting data on the shoe other than its size (some morph between Women’s 7 and Men’s 13). As Bob saw it his team knew that a successful pedal design was more than angle and anatomy, but “ struggled with the time, energy and research needed. We didn’t have the manpower or the money – so we did some creative thinking”.
In 2008 Ford employed a shoe industry consultant to supply them with the facts and figures normally used to stock a store: the most common sizes, and the proportion of sandals to stilettos to snow boots. 
User types were input into the database with pickups weighted towards boots and mustangs and minivans deemed more heel-friendly. Armed with an extensive matrix of sizes and shoe types, Ford is venturing where no other auto maker has gone in tailoring pedals to the reality of shoes.
Today’s cars offer every mod con from heated seats to DVDs – some even accommodate a ponytail in the headrest. Compared to a heel-compatible, adjustable pedal my Foot Franger doesn’t rate for driver convenience.
As Carla Zampatti says, “ I always drive in high heels. I don’t have time to change my shoes”.
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