In the first year of my undergraduate degree, I came up with the idea of doing a collaborative project in automotive design after discussing a topic with my brother, who was studying automotive engineering.
From the core to the action: I set up a new collaboration between industrial design students from the University of Lapland and automotive engineering students from Tampere University of Applied Sciences - with their Formula Student team - after getting a green light from my university.
The project aimed to design new automotive concepts for Tampere Formula Student's next season 2021. Every year, automotive engineering students build their student formula car to compete against other universities in major racing competitions across the Europe and USA.
Our design group consisted of 11 industrial design students. The pilot course was 100% student-run and took place outside the regular study schedule, with a duration of one year. No words are needed, the project was challenging but we managed to complete it on time with great success, culminating in an exhibition at Kilo Gallery in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2020.
Duration of the project: October 2019-October 2020 + exhibition in Oct-Nov 2020.
Operators: University of Lapland and Tampere University of Applied Sciences
Poster: Sanna-Kaisa Riihimäki. Concepts: Petri Salo & S. Riihimäki
Engineers and Designers: FS Formula team (only part of the team is present in the picture).
My concept idea for the project.
The Final poster for the WOLVERINE Concept.
THE EXHIBITION
GROUP EXHIBITION. Kilo-gallery, Rovaniemi, Finland (Autumn 2020).
Curator, Project manager and Exhibition designer: Sanna-Kaisa Riihimäki (Remotely from Umeå, Sweden) / Team leaders: Petri Salo and Frans Vilander (in Rovaniemi, Finland)
The exhibition presented the results of the year-long automotive project. The exhibition aimed to explain the design process behind the concepts and to highlight the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration between designers and engineers, as well as the positive results of co-design.
The results were displayed in the exhibition in the form of concepts, sketches and 3D-printed scale models. Maybe the most impressive object in the exhibition was a real Formula Student car from 2019, built by the Tampere Formula Student team.
Moodboard for the exhibition.
Gallery - exterior.
Gallery - interior.
Designing of the exhibition graphics.
Two challenges were observed during the exhibition planning process. Firstly, the gallery space had its limitations, for example, attaching print materials to the glass walls was forbidden. Therefore as a solution, we used separate folding screens, where graphics would be placed. Secondly, printing out the graphic material was possible only in A4 size. As a result, this had to be taken into consideration while designing materials in Adobe Illustrator. In the end, the A4-sized puzzle gave a quite unique look to the exhibition.
A visual mock-up of the gallery space with wall graphics.
Design team building up the exhibition before the vernissage in Rovaniemi. Pic: FS Student design team.
FORMULA STUDENT 2021 CONCEPTS - the exhibition
THE BEGINNING OF THE FS DESIGN CONCEPTS VOL. 1. Group Exhibition: Designers + Engineers. Kilo-Gallery, Rovaniemi, Autumn 2020.
The exhibition presented the results of the one-year automotive project. The exhibition aimed to explain the design process behind the concepts and underline the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration between designers and engineers. The results were seen as a form of concepts, 3D printed scale models and a real-life formula student car from the year 2019, built by the Tampere Formula Student Team (Tampere University of Applied Sciences).
Scale model: Frans Vilander, Kuisma Hurtig, Juuso Kiviniemi, Kaisa Maljanen.
3D-model: Timo Luukkonen.
Video from the Exhibition. Video: FS Team
