Umeå Masters Degree Show 2019

The city of Umeå is just 400km from the Arctic Circle, yet in early June the 200 invited guests of the university were greeted with warmth and midnight sun for the annual Umeå Institute of Design (UID) conference and degree show. 2019 marked the 30^th year since UID was founded and saw 31 graduating students from both Product Design and Interaction Design sign the celebrated ‘wall of fame’, together with nine graduates of UID’s Masters in Transportation Design. There was a distinct focus on interior 3D printed models this year, in preference to exteriors. Could this be the start of a new shift in student interests?

Below is each project in detail, with side-scrolling galleries and comments from the students:

Victor Andrean

Andrean’s Rolls-Royce Hyperborea was one of several 3D printed interior models. “It replicates the 18th century Grand Tour, a formative experience for British aristocracy in Italy, except this would be a service to start in Goodwood then head up to the arctic. This car is made to stimulate enlightenment by balancing mindsets, reflecting on your thoughts and meditating,” he explains. The twin seats sit on a rotary platform that allows occupants to face backwards and relax, or forwards to engage with the steering wheel and IP. The extreme lean-back posture of the seats is inspired by yoga, while the exterior allows the greenhouse to drop, giving a totally open, exhilarating experience – like the Edwardian Silver Ghost.

Andreas Vang

Vang’s 2039 VW concept was notable for the process employed to achieve the result. “I started by doing quick package exercises using Gravity Sketch to get five quick concepts. It gave some unexpected results to begin with, not the usual sketch results. That helped me to achieve something very different. You start to see how elements connect, how it works in 3D by not cheating the package,” he explains.

( ( ( O ) ) ) - Volkswagen Future Active Mobility from Andreas Vang on Vimeo.

The concept sees VW offering a portfolio of mobility solutions for subscription services, everything from running equipment to vans. The only owned item would be a VR headset, allowing you to enter VR spaces. “This urban fitness vehicle allows you to exercise your body while commuting,” he says. “A reversible single seat mounted in a gimbal frame allows the occupant to ‘ride’ the seat like a motorcycle, shifting body weight around. You can stand in the vehicle to get changed into exercise gear too.” The idea was proved out via a seat rig to prove the posture could work.

Max Troicher

Troicher’s BMW Duality concept focused on new interactions with the exterior using interactive sound and light. Autonomous vehicles might allow the current regulations on lighting, visibility and engine sounds to be freed-up, as sensors will do everything else in terms of driving.

Troicher: “The car employs three main levels: the lamella band around the beltline allows a personalised experience, with different observers receiving different lighting. The second is audible. With ultrasound you can direct the sound very precisely towards a person, like a sound spotlight. You can personalise the experience simultaneously. It can be used for safety or warning sounds, you always know it’s meant for just you. The third is the ultrahaptic device; you can feel a subtle tickle on the palm of your hand as you pass. That could be a unique BMW signature presence. These three interactions set the vehicle apart from other cars.”

Because of the complex interactions, the form language of the exterior is a simple canvas inspired by ‘80s-‘90s BMWs. “The super-clean bodyside is clamped by two recyclable plastic bumpers, with the BMW kidneys not being an explicit part of the design – that’s too easy to just apply those. The main purpose of ultrasound is when it’s parked, it’s interacting with the public, calling to you, or announcing your heartbeat as you jog past.”

Haoyue Jia

“I’ve moved around 12 times in the past three years, it’s really painful and I can pack everything I own into three suitcases. I’d like the possibility of mobility wherever I am and Volvo is a great brand to provide access to mobility,” explains Jia. This compact Volvo shared vehicle employs a movable internal firewall that allows up to six cases and two passengers, or two cases and four passengers. Jia used a relatively conventional process of sketching, ¼ scale clay and scanning, to create a CAD model for milling. “The design language is deliberately understated to allow for regular updates. Keeping a clean geometry with lines that run from the front fender over the greenhouse was the biggest challenge” she says.

Lingxi Yuan

Another Volvo project was presented by Lingxi Yuan. This explores how emotional attachments can be maintained in shared vehicles and how the interior parts might be better utilised when parked. Interchangeable parts such as seat pads are shared between the home interior and vehicle using magnetic clip fixings, together with modules such as a dog box, cushions and personal items mounted on the modular grid built into the side wall of the cabin.

“It’s not a single interior or exterior, it’s a whole system that people would lease,” she explains. “Volvo sets a standard for the platform and all other furniture makers and module suppliers would bring in their own talents on top so you have a wide range of products to choose from. You can configure the interior space by yourself and share and inspire other fellow users with your design. There are always some parts you don’t need to use, something else you want but cannot fit in and you don’t have to buy the parts you don’t need.”

Tejas Purohit

Purohit’s Horizon concept was developed with the help of NIO’s studio in Munich. The autonomous quad-rotor multicopter aims to offer more sustainable air travel in cities, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, avoiding congestion and gridlocks.

The cabin layout features front seats that offer a thrilling view over the city, while the rear lounge seats can rotate and form a sofa for relaxing. “It deliberately resembles a home living room with a small coffee table in the centre, warm colours and furniture-style seats that encourage lounging. I consulted an Airbus engineer, who confirmed the rotor sizes might need optimising but it was otherwise feasible.”

Like most projects displayed here the model was totally 3D printed, with assistance from NIO’s studio facilities. “I used a 3D rig and testing in VR to judge the spaces, then sketching, then Alias to produce the model,” says Purohit.

Markus Anderer

Motorsport faces big challenges. TV numbers and revenues are decreasing, while the fanbase is aging. Anderer’s ‘Peking to Paris’ project looked at how endurance rallying can be made more engaging, pairing human and AI together to film the entire race in the most remote places on earth, streaming live footage directly to fans.

This Hyundai N concept splits the cabin into two halves. One half seats the human driver. The other half has an AI camera and that side of model features more brutal, polygonal surfacing. A hydrogen fuel cell tank is mounted in the rear, with drone charging stations on the hood.

“AI and VR allow fans in future to follow their teams over the whole race in real time,” explain Anderer. “It’s a striking combination to reach victory. In future I believe everyone will have a VR headset at home so motorsport fans can follow a favourite team on the spot. Combining with AR, you can transform your living room into the race track or paddock too.”

Oliver Walderhaug

With sea levels rising by up to seven metres in 2050, new floating island cities will be built, and Walderhaug sees a big opportunity for a new breed of amphibious vehicles. He combined it with a brief from Scania to revitalise their design language in a more sustainable way.

“Scania is well known for trucks and logistics but also do a lot of work for public transportation and buses. This is an on-demand shared mobility service. The design language is informed by older Scania trucks that look like they’re formed of extruded steel structures – very raw, very rough. This tries to modernise that by combining the type of elegance seen in Wally powerboats with brutalist architecture and Bladerunner influences that I find fascinating.”

The Scania Snekkja concept is a 5.5m-long four-seater that adopts a catamaran-style architecture in water, with twin pontoons and a cabin elevated by hydraulic rams. The catamaran booms can move outwards to 3m to add stability on water and shrink to meet road-legal widths on land.

Edwin Senger

Senger’s Land Rover Backpacker is a minimalist compact 4x4 concept that offers new solutions to travelling light. It is a two-seater with a multifunctional open-design ethos that offers more than a car and a space to hang out and sleep in the wild. The vehicle incorporates a modular travelling system, including a water tank, solar sun sail, freezer and cooking equipment.

“It’s a reductive approach, meaning minimum parts and minimum weight, means minimum pollution throughout its lifecycle and maximum experience for its users,” explains Senger. The model was built in-house, with a lot of last-minute effort and teamwork from fellow students.