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MINI has teamed up with online magazine Dezeen to Explore New Designs


mini new design
Design Sketch by Dominic Wilcox

MINI has teamed up with online magazine Dezeen to commission six cutting-edge young designers to explore how design and technology could transform the way we travel in years to come.

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June 10, 2014; Designers will present their visions for ‘Frontiers - The Future of Mobility’, a pioneering exhibition at designjunction during London Design Festival, 17-21 September. The exhibition is part of an ongoing exploration of how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

The six London-based designers involved will explore this theme through varied forms, incorporating science, engineering, filmmaking and performance art.

Showcasing their work as part of the project work are Pernilla Ohrstedt, Lucy McRae, Keiichi Matsuda, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, and Dominic Wilcox. Each exhibit has been part inspired by the spirit of the MINI brand and the newly launched MINI, which combines iconic design with cutting-edge technology.

Head of MINI Design, Anders Warming, said: “The designers we’ve chosen are all pushing the boundaries of design and technologies, across a wide range of disciplines, and they’re all approaching the idea so differently. I’m intrigued to see the designs come to life and hear such different perspectives on what the future of mobility could be.”

Pernilla Ohrstedt, the architect who designed the Beatbox pavilion for the London Olympic Games in 2012 with Asif Khan, will design MINI’s exhibition space at designjunction as well as showcasing her take on the future of travel within it. Ohrstedt predicts our cars will soon be able to collect detailed 3D scans of the world around us as we drive –and will explore how we might use this to create real-time 3D maps of our cities. Body Architect Lucy McRae invites visitors to designjunction to take part in an interactive performance, in which their body is vacuum-packed to prepare it for space travel. Designer and filmmaker Keiichi Matsuda’s research examines the implications of emerging technologies for human perception and the built environment. Matsuda will make a short film exploring the future possibilities of augmented reality, which could be used to super-impose digital traffic information and road signage onto the physical world. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s experimental design helps us to imagine alternative ideals around technology. Collaborating with scientists and engineers working in the emerging field of synthetic biology, Ginsberg will investigate genetically engineered cars grown from living materials. British-Colombian artist Matthew Plummer-Fernandez re-imagines the familiar dashboard bobblehead as a personal, 3D-printed driving companion used to communicate with our cars. Finally, in a future of fully automated, computer-controlled vehicles, airbags and crumple zones will be a thing of the past, British artist and designer Dominic Wilcox suggests. So why not build an intricate stained-glass car?

Frontiers - The Future of Mobility, presented by Dezeen and MINI, takes place at designjunction, the Old Sorting Office, from September 17-21 as part of London Design Festival.

Press previews 17 September, exhibition open to the public 18-21 September.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration that examines what happens when design and technology collide. Visit the blog: MINI Frontiers