IMDC Future Luxury Report 11 INTRODUCTION of the RESEARCH
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FUTURE LUXURY IMDC IMDC Hyundai-Kia Innovation Laboratory “What Future Luxury Report 2017 AUTHORS Professor Dale Harrow is the Samuel Johnson Chris Thorpe Dan Quinlan EDITORS Margaret Durkan future Professor Dale Harrow Jiayu Wu DESIGN Dan Quinlan of PRINTED BY printed.com luxury?” CONTENTS FOREWARD 10 INTRODUCTION 12 PART 1 26 IMDC: Immersive Luxury PART 2 126 IMMA: Flagship and Renaissance PART 3 162 Conclusion and Future Envision CONCLUSION 163 NEXT STEPS 166 2018 THEMES & TOPICS 168 APPENDIX 172 7 IMDC FOREWARD Launched in May 2016, the Royal record in this area has demonstrated that as the focus of investigations. Both IMDC College of Art’s Intelligent Mobility the problem is much more subtle and and the Intelligent Mobility Master of Arts Design Centre (IMDC) is the frst of complex, and requires human-centred programme (IMMA) worked on this frst four new research centres the college approaches which are design-led. Previous project bringing to bear both the IMDC proposes to establish over the next research has tended to concentrate on research team and the IMMA student’s four years as a part of its Strategic the movement of objects, whereas the divergent ideas, visions and thematic Plan 2016-2021. urgent need is to re-focus on the journey, research to collectively challenge and the experience, the design of services progress the question ‘What is Future The vision and mission for IMDC is a and systems, and the complexity of Luxury’? highly pertinent one, coming at a time the infrastructure and interactions that when the automotive industry, but also mobility in modern advanced societies The following report sets out the fndings, the wider industry sectors including the entails. thinking, research and outcomes from an built environment sector (architecture, extensive investigation of the topic. The property, engineering, master planning, This brings a profoundly human-centred theme of future luxury is a broad topic infrastructure); technology, governmental approach to technologies, systems and the report explores the three diferent and defense, are critically in need of and services, getting to grips with the project areas which were identifed within answers to the major questions society perceptions, needs, aspirations, fears and the ‘Introduction of Research’. faces at this point of seismic shift in our behaviours of customers, users and other modes of mobility. IMDC is well placed to stakeholders. It echoes the motivations of Innovate UK’s 2014 Driverless Cars Professor Dale Harrow, IMDC Director answer these questions through the unique December 2017 design-led approach to research and call which demanded: “a focus not on creative thinking which can be brought technology, but on researching and to bear on these issues. building a deep understanding of the impact on road users and wider society.” This is a time of radical change in vehicles, The response to that call led to the Royal transport, and patterns and modes of College of Art (RCA) being the principal mobility – in technologies, but also in the HEI research organisation in the successful commercial, social and cultural models GATEway bid, which aims to accelerate with which they interact. Where previous innovation in autonomous transport and its university and corporate research has safe integration into smart city design. tended to focus on mechanics, engineering solutions to perceived problems and IMDC is delighted to present this, our iterative developments leading to inaugural project for IMDC and the Hyundai incremental market advantage, our track Kia Laboratory, taking the Future of Luxury IMDC Future Luxury Report 11 INTRODUCTION OF THE RESEARCH What is Luxury? Luxury is a challenging and complex concept. The idea of luxury relates to materiality and resource, how we shape this into experience through artefacts and services and the infuence of these on one’s self, identity and our relationship to others. Luxury is also a transient concept changing over time – according to taste, levels of afuence and cultural perception and bias. For future brands and businesses then, understanding luxury is important and defning the constructs, themes and elements which will be part of future luxury are critical to company success and survival – and especially so for those companies wishing to provide distinct empathetic solutions. Their challenge is to understand the transition towards a more individual, complex and nuanced realisation of luxury consumption. IMDC Future Luxury Report 13 ‘A CATALYST FOR FUTURE RESEARCH & PROVOCATIVE CREATIVE THINKING’ OUR WORK 1. The work of the RCA’s Intelligent Mobility Design Centre (IMDC) and Intelligent Promote a wide ranging dialogue on the Mobility Master of Arts (IMMA) – ideas, methods and questions emanating represents a series of divergent ideas, from luxury research for future work in SERVICE visions and thematic research projects – this area. which collectively challenge and progress the question ‘What is Future Luxury?’ These separate projects, carried out over 2. OBJECT a period of 12 months, aim to provide a Distil a range of principle emergent themes vibrant, rich and intellectually challenging which we feel are relevant to ‘future luxury’ backdrop to the RCA’s collaboration with research for Kia within a creative research Hyundai Kia. space via the RCA’s IMDC and IMMA. ? Collectively we aim to expand the future OUR AIM luxury framework through this work as will Our aim in these projects was to take be seen throughout this document and as EXPERIENCE a range of perspectives on the Future represented in Figure 1. We understand that Luxury domain. In so doing, we believe this our reinterpretation of luxury is, and can has allowed us to create a series of new only be partial – and this work has revealed insights which we feel enable us to achieve many new areas of thinking which we know two key aims: are essentially embryonic. TRADITIONAL LUXURY FRAMEWORK FUTURE LUXURY FRAMEWORK However, we also feel that this report embodies an appropriate and valuable series of insights – which we hope will be received in the spirit it is intended – as a catalyst for future research and provocative creative thinking in this area. Figure 1. Expanding the future luxury themes and framework IMDC Future Luxury Report 15 IMMERSIVE LUXURY PROJECT A wider look at the future of luxury 1. gathering response and opinions IMDC from diferent design disciplines. ONE THEME, THREE PROJECTS The theme of future luxury is a broad topic, which was broken down into three diferent projects for the purposes of this investigation. The IMDC’s projects were designed to look at luxury in the further FLAGSHIP PROJECT future and gather opinions from a range 2. Vehicle design project exploring the IMMA of non-automotive design disciplines. future of luxury vehicles. The IMMA students worked on two projects that looked at Luxury in the near to mid future. These projects are the ‘Flagship Project’ that looks at the future of luxury sedans, the ‘Renaissance Project’ that explores immersive luxury trends and gets vehicle designers to respond in a non- automotive way. The Renaissance project was also supported by a series of ‘Thought Pieces’ which were a series of research trips carried out by students helping them to describe luxury now and in the future. An overview of the ‘Thought Pieces’ can be found in the Appendix. RENAISSANCE PROJECT Vehicle design project researching 3. luxury trends and producing IMMA responses to future trends. Figure 2. The breakdown of the three project and research focuses between IMDC and IMMA IMDC Future Luxury Report 17 INTRODUCTION OF THE TEAM IMDC/IMMA Project lead Executive Director, Research Centres IMDC TEAM Professor Dale Harrow Lucy Kennedy The immersive luxury project was lead by Professor Dale Harrow is Chair of the Lucy’s role as Executive Director, Research Professor Dale Harrow with a core research IMDC and Head of the Intelligent Mobility Centres is to build on the success of team made up of Jiayu Wu, Sam Johnson Design Programme recognised as a global existing research centres of the Royal and Dan Quinlan. centre of excellence in automotive and College of Art – the Helen Hamlyn design education. As a former Dean of the Centre for Design and CX (the Creative School of Design at the RCA he introduced Exchange lab) – to establish the RCA’s new programmes in Service Design and new research centres. These Centres International Programmes in innovation will initially encompass the IMDC and IMMA TEAM design and championed multi disciplinary the Material Science Research Centre The IMMA student and tutor teams were design methods through new curriculum (incorporating the Burberry Material lead by Dr Chris Thorpe with the close development. Futures Research Group), and in due involvement of, Guy Colborne, Matt course the Computer Science and Drawing Humphries, Cynthia Charwick-Bland and Dale is an international opinion former research centres, building on the RCA’s visiting professor J Mays. and commentator and media persona world-leading research in art and design on design the automotive and transport as well as developing new interdisciplinary industry. He is a multi award-winning collaborations in felds including design-led designer, academic leader and a robotics, artifcial intelligence, and digital researcher and is regularly cited as one visualisation and simulation. of the most infuential and important fgures in the automotive industry. He is Lucy oversees the efective and efcient committed to design education and is