Design inspiration - for automobile designers - Cover Story

Automotive Industries,  Dec, 2002  by John Peter

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The next step is to make a low-level mockup out of high-density foam. This gives the team an idea of the physical size of something.

"If it's necessary," says Landry, "we might even embed some weights into the unit to suggest how much it might weigh."

"A lot of people today, with the schedules being compressed on programs, will try and evaluate a form on a screen," Landry adds. "Basically what they're looking at is a synthetic representation in cyberspace of what this form looks like but they really don't know until they hold it or they sit near it or feel it what the form is like."

Alias, Pro/Engineer and Rhino are the tools used to generate CAD models. As the design is finalized and the data base is turned over to the mechanical engineers, the design intent is locked in to the CAD database. "We can transfer that database anywhere in the world," Landry says,

The models are not only used to finalize the design but are also valuable for testing.

"If we're putting a real hot chip set into a notebook," Landry says, "we may run some early thermal analysis so we can see how hot or how cool an area is and whether or not we need a fan. If we don't need a fan, does it need three louvers? Will three screw up the appearance? If it does can you work with the thermal engineers to come up with an alternative to maintain the integrity of the design."

A few years ago, Hewlett Packard also started doing something that was unusual for their industry--they allowed visitors inside the design studio. Quite a few of the company's bigger customers were visiting the HP campus almost daily. And when Landry found out about it, the design team thought it should take advantage of it. The visit to the design studio soon became the hottest thing. So hot, in fact, that visits had to be limited to three a week.

Visitors must sign a non-disclosure agreement, the only requirement for visiting the design studio.

Landry says that what amazes visitors most is that they get a chance to have a kind of cause and effect, they participate in the activity.

"When you think that designers are actually sitting down face-to-face with these people and there's no intermediary, just us and them, having casual conversation about how technology was impeding or helping their performance," he says.

Landry says that designers transfer that information into design ideas.

The thought comes to mind of General Motors or Honda allowing visitors into their design studios. They just wouldn't do it.

"We thought the same way," Landry says, "but things change. There's tremendous value in it for us. I'm disappointed that we didn't do it earlier."

Building Momentum

Phyllis Lambert is an internationally known architect and founder of the International Confederation of Architectural Museums, Heritage Montreal and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the study of American Architecture among others. She has also curated and organized many architectural exhibitions and is currently the Consultant Architect for the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), an independent museum archive and study center devoted to the architecture of the past, present and future. She was drawn to architecture by the need to improve the aesthetic that she saw lacking in the fabric of the North American city.