Interior Motives - Autumn 2009 | Article

IN THIS ISSUE

CITROEN C3

Lead interior designer: Christophe Cayrol
Colour & Materials designer: Christophe Poinlane
Project started: Summer 2006
Project completed: Summer 2008
Launch: IAA Frankfurt/September 2009

Contemporary design inspired Citroën’s interior design team to mix technical fabrics and other materials in such a way that they evoke sophistication and quality, while retaining a simple and modern feel.

As Mark Lloyd, project leader for the C3 interior explains: “This is about material associations that evoke sophistication, and it’s also about what is the environment when you’re in your car – in terms of luminosity and spirit.”

When it comes to perceived quality, he says, the C3 is “out of place – it looks like it belongs in the segment above. This sophistication is conveyed not only by the architecture of the design, but also through the materials and their contrasts: the shiny, the matte, the smooth, the soft and the cold”.

BMW Vision EfficientDynamics

Vehicle type: concept/2-door sports car
Interior design director: Marc Girard
Lead interior designer: Jochen Paesen
Material & Colour manager: Volker Schrem
Project started: February 2009
Project completed: September 2009
Launch: Frankfurt/Sept 2009

The entire project was completed in just seven months, starting with the initial sketching competition phase in February 2009 and ending just days before the car’s debut at the Frankfurt motor show in September.

The interior structure is made up of twisting, dynamic layers. This pivotal theme – both for the exterior and interior – came about during a series of workshops: “We told them, reveals BMW interior design director Marc Girard:

“Take other materials that you are not using in your daily business, take canvas and acrylic paints; just paint, sculpt, fold paper, fold metal. Find a way to express this theme that you would like to work on – don’t pay attention to doing a car’.”

Read the full design review

Aston Martin One-77

Vehicle type: production/2-door sports car
Design Director: Marek Reichman
Interior Design Director: Matt Hill
Colour & trim design: Libby Rooke
Project started: Spring 2008
Project completed: Spring 2009
Launch: Villa d’Este/April 2009

The car is being billed as a perfect combination of art and engineering, and will be produced in a limited run of just 77, hence its enigmatic name – and, to some extent, its high cost too. At £1.2 million ($1.9m) this is Aston Martin’s most extreme model yet.

Its exterior front wing was glimpsed at the 2008 Paris show, followed by the exterior at the 2009 Geneva show in March, before finally, the interior was revealed at Villa d’Este on the shores of Lake Como in Italy in April 2009.

Despite the slow drip-feed of reveals, chief interior designer Matt Hill explains that the One-77 design process was quite speedy, partly out of necessity:

“I’m one of only two interior designers at Aston Martin, so we don’t have time for many versions and tend to make decisions quickly.”

Jaguar XJ

Vehicle type: production/four-door sedan
Design manager: Ian Callum
Lead interior designer: Mark Phillips
Project started: Spring 2006Spring 2009Saatchi Gallery, London/July 2009

The XJ is the second vehicle in Jaguar’s product renaissance after the XF. Two architectural studies were explored under the names ‘Structure’ and ‘Fluid’. The more organic, non-linear ‘Fluid’ advanced design study was dropped, and the ‘Structure’ study – including a wraparound veneer ribbon that made it all the way through to production – was chosen in summer 2006 to be taken forward to the scale-model development phase.

Lead interior designer Mark Philips had a clear vision: “I wanted to appeal to a more design-savvy and younger audience, to make a big and very contemporary statement relevant to modern consumers.”

Read the full design review