Interior Modern Cars

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Interior Car Design of the Future

The fads of the fashion world are increasingly influencing how vehicles are designed and styled, writes Samantha Selinger-Morris.

It's no coincidence that the bright yellow exterior of Suzuki's Swift S-Concept car at last month's Geneva motor show was virtually identical in shade to the skintight leather pants worn by topless Victoria's Secret model Candice Swanepoel in the February issue of Italian Vogue.

The colour and material designs manager at Ford Australia, Emily Lai, says fashion trends have always played a large part in the creative process for automotive designers. ''We're seeing a lot of fashion things coming in to car design,'' Lai says, and acid brights, she adds, are just one of them.

Indeed, Geneva played host to a battery-acid-green Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG E-Cell and Renault's tangerine concept car, the Captur.

''It's hard to forget,'' Lai says of the high-voltage hues.

Another trend Lai spotted at the Geneva show that was ripped straight from the catwalks is the contrasting use of matte and shiny materials, such as the intertwined seats in the Renault R-Space, which features both matte-black plastic on the driver's seat and shiny white plastic on the passenger's. ''I was in Italy last year and seeing that a lot with leather boots,'' Lai says.

The senior colour and trim designer for Toyota, Chalisa Morrison, was also struck by the frequent use of colour blocking in Geneva - where a design is divided into large segments by different, solid colours - which is currently big in active wear such as tracksuits and ski wear.

The white interior of the Kia KV7, for instance, is sharply split by pale lemon-yellow seats and wall panels.

That the panels are also covered with fabric marked by square, convex bumps ties into yet another fashion trend, Morrison says - the addition of ''really cool textures''.

''High-end sports shoes use some pretty high-end textures, adidas shoes in particular, and as a colour designer, we very much look to those areas for inspiration,'' says Morrison, a former fashion designer for both her own (now defunct) label, Moki, and American brand LizClaiborne.

As for sustainable materials that have been championed by ''green'' issues of Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair during the past five years (and swathed over cover girls such as Cameron Diaz in the process), you can expect to find them under your bottoms soon, too.

Ford, Lai says, will begin incorporating fabrics and foam made from bamboo and soy in 2014. And Toyota, Morrison says, will ''hopefully'' soon incorporate yarns made from corn starch, soy bean and bamboo.

These are some of the more adaptable fashion trends.

Others, such as the ''pixelated'' rear cabin area of the Renault R-Space - a virtual match for prints in high-end American label Proenza Schouler's autumn 2011 collection - aren't so straightforward. With the R-Space, there is, of course, the absence of seat belts or defined chairs.

And with automotive design in general, the chief interiors designer for Holden, Guy Burgoyne, says, the engineering considerations that impact on fabric and interior outfitting are numerous. There is, for instance, the necessity of having an internal dash that crumples on impact and a front end that must be almost entirely devoid of sharp edges.

''We've got this living room that we're trying to create for people,'' Burgoyne says of cars.

''And yet with your living room, you don't have to consider what would happen if you were in a high-speed accident and the nice edges that maybe you have on your [belongings] at home, you appreciate, would very quickly become deadly weapons in a [car] interior.''

And, Morrison says, car designers don't have the option of using the sorts of materials often used to evoke luxury - such as chunky wool or satin - because they'll rip or become soiled too easily.

Neither Burgoyne or Morrison expect the emphasis on detail, as seen at the Geneva show - not just funky textures and colours but technological add-ons such as the British flag that lights up the transparent roof of the Mini Rocketman when switched on - to give way any time soon.

Burgoyne says the trend is a clear reaction to the ''hyper-simplicity'' style that reigned about five or six years ago.

''[Then], it was about the minimal number of surfaces and lines you could possibly create,'' he says. ''But once you've got an extreme, then you almost have to come back [from it] and that's happening at the moment; interiors and exteriors with a lot more form added, more shape and more action on the surfaces.''

And it's not just fashion shaping this overall trend either, Lai says, but architecture, too.

The emphasis on ''fluid'' surfaces, such as the Renault R-Space's intertwined front seats, she says, is reminiscent of new buildings by so-called ''starchitects'' Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.

''You just look at the latest architecture and it blends into the environment,'' Lai says, noting the former's luxury New York apartment building that has a rumpled stainless steel skin resembling a piece of fabric blowing in the wind and the latter's design for a private San Diego residence that looks like a space station. This isn't to say it's always automotive designers looking to other industries for inspiration, rather than the other way around.

For Mark Armstrong, creative director for Blue Sky Design - a multidisciplinary firm that designed not only the portable cauldron that was used in the Sydney Olympics relay in 2000 but also Qantas's new check-in areas across the country - car dealerships are often his first port of call when brainstorming a new product.

''If we want to create a feeling of luxury, then spending some time inside a Bentley or Rolls-Royce [showroom] is really good,'' Armstrong says.

And Fiat and Audi cars, for instance, recently inspired Blue Sky's designs for a new medical device.

The company that created the product, he says, ''wanted it to move from being a sombre medical product to being something that would live happily in the household and move from being an under-the-radar brand to being something that everyone knows about.

''So we started referencing how brands are executed - and how the brand logo is displayed - and the automotive guys are masters at it. Like, Audi backlight it. And there was a [Fiat] that had a badge, like a jewel, located in the centre of the steering wheel, surrounded by glass, then metal and then leather.

''The way the brand was embellished was very rich, very interesting, not just screen-printed, which is very typical of a medical company.

''We're not going to copy that. It would be inappropriate to put a big jewel [on this product]. But if it was the on-and-off button and it glowed in the middle of the night just when you need it, [it would] convey the brand in a nice way.''