Open mind­ed to new visions

Design con­nects, design con­nects — this was impres­sive­ly demon­strat­ed by the bay­ern design pavil­ion at the IAA Mobil­i­ty (Sep­tem­ber 7 — 12, 2021). Over six days, the exhi­bi­tion “Open mind­ed to new visions” in the Open Space in the Kaiser­hof of the Munich Res­i­dence pre­sent­ed design as a cen­tral suc­cess fac­tor for the entire mobil­i­ty indus­try and gave a broad audi­ence insights into oth­er­wise hid­den design processes.

Design­ers are indis­pens­able for the trans­for­ma­tion to sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty. They bring a holis­tic and user-focused way of think­ing, a tan­gi­ble and vision­ary way of work­ing and an open and solu­tion-ori­ent­ed attitude.

The exhi­bi­tion con­cept sum­ma­rized this atti­tude in five key­words: Holis­tic, Human Mind­ed, Solu­tion Ori­ent­ed, Agile and Open, and Vision­ary. Through insights into design process­es for mobil­i­ty from com­pa­nies, agen­cies and uni­ver­si­ties from Bavaria, these could be expe­ri­enced in con­crete terms. The exhi­bi­tion fea­tured exhibits from Hyve, KMS Team, Leon­hard Kurz, N+P Indus­tri­al Design, Patri­cia Urquio­la for BMW, Star Munich and stu­dent work from Munich Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (Yong­hoon Lee with Prof. Dr. Oth­mar Wick­en­heis­er) and Coburg Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (Celine Rei­ther and Cora Ennes with Prof. Dr. Michael Mark­ert), among others.

“Design means rethink­ing what already exists”.

So instead of the prod­uct, the process was illu­mi­nat­ed, mak­ing it com­pre­hen­si­ble which par­tic­u­lar ways of think­ing and work­ing dis­tin­guish design­ers*. “Design means rethink­ing what already exists,” said bay­ern design Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Nadine Vicen­ti­ni in con­ver­sa­tion with State Sec­re­tary Roland Weigert and Bay­ern Inno­v­a­tiv Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr. Rain­er Seßn­er at the Meet’n’Talk. The lat­ter empha­sized in par­tic­u­lar the nec­es­sary accep­tance of the var­i­ous trans­port sys­tems among the pop­u­la­tion and called for smart, com­pre­hen­sive and well-designed access to the var­i­ous mobil­i­ty con­cepts for users. State Sec­re­tary Roland Weigert saw Bavaria with its strong design econ­o­my, research and indus­tri­al land­scape well equipped for this.

A state­ment by bay­ern design Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Nadine Vicen­ti­ni can be seen from minute 0:59 onwards in this video review by the Bavar­i­an State Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Region­al Devel­op­ment and Energy.

In addi­tion to this dis­cus­sion, there were many oth­er inspir­ing encoun­ters with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent fields, some­what away from the hus­tle and bus­tle of the trade fair. In par­tic­u­lar, the Cir­cu­lar Heroes designed by Patri­cia Urquio­la for BMW proved to be ide­al focal points for dis­cus­sions with the pub­lic. For the experts, there were numer­ous excit­ing points of con­tact for pos­si­ble collaborations.

Also inte­grat­ed into the pre­sen­ta­tion was the new trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion on elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty from Bay­ern Inno­v­a­tiv. It pre­sent­ed inter­est­ing facts about elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty and new mobil­i­ty con­cepts. It also includ­ed the emo­bile Ger­man Alpine Road project, which enables more sus­tain­able Alpine tourism. Both parts of the exhi­bi­tion com­ple­ment­ed each oth­er ideally.

The design of the pavil­ion by the two Munich agen­cies Abc&D and Zan­zot­ti Indus­tri­al Design clev­er­ly picked up on the mot­to “Open mind­ed to new visions” and pre­sent­ed the 120 square meter pavil­ion in an airy exhi­bi­tion design and large-scale typog­ra­phy on tar­pau­lins. These were mount­ed on a reusable scaf­fold­ing sys­tem, which in turn pro­vid­ed space for the exhibits inside.

It turned out to be a stroke of luck that the neigh­bor­ing stand of the State Min­istry of Hous­ing, Con­struc­tion and Trans­port had also com­plete­ly opt­ed for the sus­tain­able and process-ori­ent­ed scaf­fold­ing con­struc­tion method, so that both stands ide­al­ly com­ple­ment­ed each oth­er. In addi­tion, the Bavar­i­an weath­er gods showed them­selves mer­ci­ful and bathed the Open Space of the IAA MOBIL­I­TY 2021 almost con­tin­u­ous­ly in the most beau­ti­ful sunlight.

The bay­ern design pre­sen­ta­tion in the Impe­r­i­al Court­yard of the Munich Res­i­dence at the IAA MOBIL­I­TY 2021 took place in coop­er­a­tion with Bay­ern Inno­v­a­tiv and the Ger­man Alpine Road and was spon­sored by the Bavar­i­an Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs, Region­al Devel­op­ment and Energy.

Cred­its: bay­ern design / Olaf Beck­er BECKERLACOUR