A taxi ride, perhaps, has an intrinsic quality of germinating a tale. A taxi/cab is emblematic of every city in the world and, no matter where you live or travel, it can be a journey of frustration, delight or simply sheer stupefaction from where scads of tales could be spun.

To celebrate the New York City’s taxi hundredth anniversary in 2007, the Design Trust for Public Space along with Parsons The New School for Design have kick-started a study on enhancing the taxi system & vehicle. The current status of the New York City taxi has been billed as appalling and inefficient and the entire Designing the Taxi enterprise focuses on overhauling the taxi experience. A workshop was held in May where the participants that included fleet owners, drivers, landscape architects, urban planners, vehicle and industrial designers, graphic artists, etc. discussed techniques in which expertise, experience and innovation could intersect. An exhibit of project proposals will be on view at Parsons through January 15, 2006.

Designing the Taxi is all set to recreate the cab as a definitive urban icon. A point to note though – there’s absolutely no compromise on the distinctive colour … the yellow stays.

related links

Designing the Taxi

Move over Segway. Toyota has created its own one person car concept. Called the “i-Swing”, the vehicle is high customizable with a body made of polyurethane and comes with embedded color LED screens on the front door and rear panel. It also has the ability to communicate between two i-Swings so that you could synchornise their movements. No word of when this will ever see the light of day.

related links

Car Design News (via dezain)

Being born in a city that celebrates shopping, Dubai born Indian artist Raj needed a break. “My exposure to Art and Design had always been from a commercial angle”, explains Raj,” so the Omkara project was a way for me to break away express myself.”

We nodded with sympathy and decided to be polite:

Sensory: So Raj, what’s the Omkara’s journey?

Raj: The Omkara was an attempt to produce an ‘improvised installation art piece’ that attained meaning and personality as time progressed. On a very philosophical level, it is very much like life where one grows up to becomes who he is because of both foreseen and unforeseen circumstances imposed upon him.

Sensory: Yes but it’s a car..

Raj: The word Omkara actually comes from the Holy Hindu bible BHAGWAD GITA and means – ’ the vehicle to cross the ocean of life ’ Crossing this ocean is the journey one must undertake in a lifetime and henceforth encounter the three basic elements of mortality – creation, preservation and destruction.

Sensory: So the car is the metaphor and it would go through the three basic elements of mortality?

Raj: Exactly.

Sensory: On your website, you’ve said that Omkara is far from over and that you had planned on driving it from the United Arab Emirates to India. Is that part of the destruction and preservation phase? And how’s it coming along?

Raj: It’s not coming along at all… I’ve been very caught up trying to earn money for bread at the moment…. but the Omkara will be revived someday and it will set off on another journey soon. A journey not so extravagant maybe – but possibly unique enough to lower a few windows and invite a few honks!

Sensory: How’s the reaction been so far?

Raj: 60% awe, 25% scepticism, 10% ridicule, 4.5% vindication and 0.5% publicity. While some made fun of the entire project and thought that I was perhaps ‘trying too hard’ to make a point, many others were fascinated by the very scale and process undertaken to complete the project and the mythological concept embedded within. However, it was exceptionally hard to find a media outlet/gallery to exhibit the piece in this country as ‘the Omkara’ was considered a piece too controversial for an islamic country.

(more…)

Surf through the net and you’ll come across bucket loads of talent nesting in portfolio sites and design competitions, so it was heartening to see a big company like Virgin Atlantic to take notice of Design for Chunks, an annual competition that invited designers around the world to turn air sickness airbags into their very own canvasses:

Inspired by an online art competition, Virgin is introducing 20 ``limited edition’’ sick-bag designs and will distribute them on all their flights for the next six months. The airline teamed up with the unpleasantly named ``Design for Chunks’’ competition headed by multimedia designer Oz Dean, and 600 entries were whittled to 20 winners.

``We’re really excited about bringing art from around the world to such a huge number of people via our sick bags,’’ Virgin Atlantic media chief Lysette Gauna said in a prepared statement. ``It’s a first in the industry, and we’re sure these bags will soon become collectors items.’‘

related links

Design for Chunks
Virgin Atlantic
Mercury News: That’s ill

The 2003 Winner – The Crouching Lion

Once again, Peugeot is inviting people to design a “near-future car” (as opposed to the car of the future) where the winner will get a chance to have their design realized in a full scale version of their concept car at the 2005 Frankfurt Motor Show. In addition, the winner will also received a cash reward and possible employment. Deadline is December 8th.

related links

3rd Peugeot Car Design Competition (via design.weblogs.inc)

Virgin Atlantic announced the introduction of double suites for passengers travelling in the award winning Upper Class Suites (Not pictured above):

The double suites are located in the center of the lower deck in a herringbone configuration. Passengers can reserve a double bed, upon checking in for their flight at which point a Virgin Atlantic Upper Class agent will be able to book the double bed suites according to availability. These suites can
remain separate until the passengers wish to go to sleep. A member of the cabin crew can unclip the middle partition transferring the space into a double suite. Alternatively, the partition can be removed at the beginning of the flight when the suite is in seat mode for passengers who wish to socialize until bedtime.

related links

Virgin Atlantic Official Site

Twice As Nice! Virgin Atlantic Offers Upper Class Passengers Suite-er Dreams With Double Suites Onboard

Pininfarina concept car

Don’t worry, you’ll have designer helmets to go with it. With a price tag of $ 1.2 million, the car is going to have a limited production of seventy five.

Its creator, the italian design house, Pininfarina, has already made a name with its avant-garde designs for Ferrari and is going to be building its own car for the first time as part of its (take a good guess) 75th anniversary.

Oh, and it can go 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in about 5 seconds.

(more…)

The Advisor 2004 – the new commercial software of a virtual vehicle analysis software by AVL, gives us a hint of what is in store for us in the near future as far as the evolution of design software is concerned.


With the Advisor, you could do a rapid analysis of the performance, fuel economy and emissions in current cars and trucks as well as vehicles that have yet to be built.


According to the company, users of the software have reported a potential fuel savings of up to 50 percent in “air condition mode of hybrid-electric vehicles”.

Related url

AVL
AVL - Advisor
Press Release: Commercial ADVISOR Vehicle Design Software Offers Advanced Features

Turns out reports of a giant jinn haunting the northern villages of Afghanistan were nothing but sightings of a rather special Mi-24 helicopter.

(url) (via Our ol’ pal, Gizmodo)

As part of a project for Carlson’s industrial design senior class, Boeing requested that students redesign an airplane ceiling panel.

Carlson chose to create a skylight located above every seat, where the fan and flight-attendant help buttons are located on passenger airplanes.

“I decided that people don’t just need a fan,” Carlson said. “They need a window above their head.”

The skylight is a large video screen that projects real time footage of the sky taken by a camera mounted above the plane.

(link)

Almost seems like a page out of Tintin – Twenty-seven teams from seven countries are competing to develop space ships spurred partially by the $10 million in prize money offered by one of the world’s richest men – Microsoft co-founder Paul G Allen.

Check out the Gallery

Related:

Rediff Article
Da Vinci Project

How about this for participatory design? Engineers and scientists from leading UK universities are putting together a “hi-tech car of the future” with the help of members of the public as part of a campaign to showcase UK’s innovation. All you have to do is hop over to their website for more information.

Nicknamed the SPRINTCar, the vehicle is expected to:

meet customers’ expectations in terms of performance and comfort levels;
surpass all current legal and environmental requirements, and aim to incorporate anticipated future requirements;
produce ultra-low emissions;
be designed for:
o realistic manufacture;
o upgrading during its lifetime;
o dismantling at its end of life (with a view to re-use and recycling); and
o modularity and reconfiguration without compromising safety; and
showcase developed and incorporated technologies and be fit for further proof of engineering concept and economic viability by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership.

Quite a tall order. They hope that the car will be picked up at some point and developed by car manufacturers.

Related:

BBC: Public asked to design future car
Sprint Car official website

Ever felt your visual glands secreting whenever you laid your sinful eyes on the sultry body of a sexy concept car and wished you could have more? Well, now you can guarantee yourself an ample supply of concept car crack with Designerspace – an online community where car designers (and amateurs) can share their work, get jobs, make connections or like the rest of us, get high surfing through thousands of delectable car designs.

Fine Print – Not all portfolios are made equal, but the gems more than make up for it, like the ones below:

Designer: Wyatt Turner (USA)
Related Links:
Designer Space Portfolio
Personal Site





Designer: Benoît Tallec (France)
Related Links:
Designer Space Portfolio

Name: Audi RSQ
Year: 2035

Audi pulled off its most ambitious product placement project to date with the sexy Audi RSQ that it designed for the 2035 movie world of “I, ROBOT“.

Some of the special features that we should expect are:

- The car of the future does not drive on wheels but on spheres
- Its two doors are rear-hinged that open similar to the butterfly principle.

See? We don’t just do furniture.