The GINA Light Visionary Model created by BMW in 2008 is one of the company’s more creative designs. From May 21 through September 7, 2014, the Gina will join seventeen other concept cars from the U.S. and Europe in “Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas” at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. On display will be concepts that pushed the limits of designers’ and engineers’ imaginations and foreshadowed the future of design from the early 1930s to the 21st century.
With GINA, BMW Group Design opened a fundamental debate about exactly what characteristics would influence future automotive development. "BMW created GINA to challenge conventional automotive design and manufacturing techniques" said Fernando Pardo, concept originator and lead designer, BMW Group DesignworksUSA. “This fresh approach to expound on the design adage of “form follows function” integrates emotion, humanism, natural aesthetics, and newly applied materials all within a unifying architecture. The intention was to stimulate the environment of creativity, thereby leading to a paradigm shift.”
The GINA Light Visionary Model features a virtually seamless outer skin, consisting of a flexible fabric material stretched over a movable substructure. Furthermore, functions are only enabled when they are actually needed. Take the headlights, for example. In a normal position, when the headlights are not active or needed, they are hidden under the special fabric cover. As soon as the driver turns on the lights, the contour of the front end changes.
The rear and the rocker panels of the GINA Light Visionary Model can also adapt both the shape and function to the driving situation in hand. Both can change the shape of their outer skin to meet a particular driving requirement. The reduction to the essentials and adaptation to the driver’s wishes enhance the vehicle’s emotional appeal, thus fulfilling a key objective of the GINA philosophy.
Ken Gross, Consulting Curator for "Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary Ideas", explained why GINA was chosen to be included, “Beyond its undeniable beauty, the GINA Light Visionary Model was an advanced, water-resistant, translucent textile-bodied concept car with a virtually seamless fabric exterior skin that could change elements of its shape on demand. And it wasn't just a fanciful exercise. The GINA study helped BMW to develop rapid manufacturing, digital tooling techniques, and a robot-guided steel embossing process to create the complex hoods for the production of the BMW Z4 M Roadster and the BMW Z4 M Coupé.”
At the Atlanta exhibition, conceptual drawings, patents and scale models will be paired with realized cars to show how experimental design changed the automobile from an object of function to a symbol of future possibilities. Sarah Schleuning, exhibition curator and curator of decorative arts and design at the High Museum of Art said, “The concept cars presented in ‘Dream Cars’ demonstrate how design can transcend the present and offer new paths and opportunities for the future. While these cars were never mass-produced, they shaped the future of the automotive industry by challenging the notion of what is possible, technologically and stylistically.”
As partial as we may be to BMWs, the other cars chosen for this exhibition include some spectacular concepts. Information on the “Dream Cars” exhibition and the High Museum of Art Atlanta, including dates, hours, prices, and directions, can be found at https://www.high.org/Art/Exhibitions/Dream-Cars.aspx.
—Scott Blazey
