Rachel Calton
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- Norman Foster’s ‘Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture’ at the Guggenheim is a requiem for the age of combustion
- Memory, race, identity inform Sondra Perry’s winning artwork for Rolls-Royce Dream Commission
- See the colourful Jeff Koons BMW car creation
- Why we should rethink design in the age of machine intelligence
- This is how some brands are approaching circularity
- In talk with the maestro of car design Marcello Gandini
- Artist Almudena Romero questions production and consumption with her ephemeral organic photography
- Artwork at Frieze London 2021 explores the human/machine relation
- Barbican Gallery presents Isamu Noguchi: artists, designer, philosopher
- The last days of combustion
- Jeff Koons is the latest artist to work with BMW on limited-edition collectable art cars
- Genesis chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke on building a new car brand
- See fashion designer Paul Smith’s imaginative and sustainable MINI Strip
- Beauty, love, lust, sex, death, ‘The Age of Combustion’ is an ode and a farewell to the motor car
- Why spiritual luxury is the future expression of the concept
- The shape-shifting MINI Vision Urbanaut rethinks the vehicle to be more than transport
- Modernist icon: Charlotte Perriand at the Design Museum
- The custom-built Rolls-Royce Boat Tail is nautical inspired
- Design Books: Ultimate Collector Cars by Taschen
- Sudo Reiko explores material’s possibilities at Japan House London
- Design Book: Mok Wei Wei: Works by W Architects
- Microlino is an electric city bubble car fit for the 21st century
- Insight: World’s leading car designers on future, sustainable design
- Playful seesaw installation at Trump wall wins 2020 Beazley Designs award
- Explore the work of architect David Adjaye in new book
- 2020 in review: A year in design and rethinking the future
- How ideas from RCA students for a megacity taxi in 2040 can impact on our future
- See Balenciaga’s first virtual show, a video game set in 2031 with avatars driving Polestars
- Studio Wayne McGregor investigates the human/machine relation in the information age
- From wabi-sabi to crafting sustainable surfboards, why we should all take up making
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Observations
This week I met with the architect Norman Foster to talk through his exhibition “Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture” currently on at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. This is a lively show narrated in seven chapters linking automobile design to art and sculpture, architecture and urban planning, critical thinking and intellectual discourse of the time. And in doing so, it sets out to unfold how we can use lessons from the past to navigate the post-combustion future.
The most significant car in the exhibition to Foster is the Dymaxion, the visionary prototype designed by the architect and theorist Buckminster Fuller together with yacht designer Starling Burgess in 1933-34.
Says Foster: “The Dymaxion compared interestingly with the Ford sedan of the period. Bucky (Fuller) was a very close friend of Henry Ford and could get any part at a discount. So, the two share the same transmission and engine but, because of its extraordinary, streamlined shape, the Dymaxion would go faster on less fuel and would carry more people. It’s an exercise in doing more with less.”
Warming to the theme he continues, “Perhaps that is the big message today: we have to do more with less, we have to have more mobility, less risk, consume less energy and it has to be more fun. And as you move through these galleries and see the different colours and shapes historically, you realize there is an incredible richness and variety. This is a very interesting lesson for the future.”