Launched in 2016, the Hyundai Kia Innovation Laboratory was the first industry funded innovation labs at the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre. In 2023, the partnership was renewed for a further two years, ensuring that Hyundai Motor Group and its Hyundai, Kia and Genesis brands will continue to work with the Centre to foster the creative exploration of the future of mobility.
At a glance
During the initial three year term, the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre's research teams lead design-driven research projects with the support of Hyundai and Kia design centres. These projects aimed to conceive and explore new areas in transport experiences, vehicle design, digital technology integration, mobility systems and other research topics. The aim was to recognise and realise the role of design in the process of envisioning the future of mobility and advanced technologies.
The second phase, which began in 2023, includes four key areas: the Hyundai-Kia Design and Innovation Project, Intelligent Mobility MA Visiting Design Fellowship Programme, Custom Professional Development Workshops and The Hyundai-Kia Student Awards.
The interdisciplinary Hyundai-Kia Design and Innovation Project will be conducted with Centre staff and a selected group of RCA students. The project outline and direction will be mutually agreed by the partners and will be supported by Schreyer in the role of Visiting Professor.
For the Intelligent Mobility MA Visiting Design Fellowship Programme, a number of designers from Hyundai, Kia and Genesis visit the Centre during the year. Each Visiting Fellow co-develops a design research project with Centre colleagues and receives dedicated mentoring support in design and research from the Centre team.
Four custom professional development workshops will be delivered annually for the fellows and Group staff. These will focus on various subjects, such as Centre city mobility, new vehicle typologies, and future-facing automotive design issues, such as sustainable design and autonomy.
The annual Hyundai-Kia Awards provide opportunities for the entire RCA student community to refine their understanding of mobility challenges and mobility creativity while developing an understanding of relevant industry propositions.
Key details
Projects
Hyundai-Kia Awards for Excellence in Sustainability and Creative Practice
Launched in 2023, the Hyundai-Kia Awards for Excellence in Sustainability and Creative Practice celebrate projects by graduating RCA students that demonstrate a sincere commitment to sustainability.
Submissions are judged by a panel of design experts from Hyundai-Kia and the RCA. Shortlisted candidates present their projects to a panel, and winners are chosen in three categories: Inspiration, Innovation and Creativity.
The winners are announced at an award ceremony at the RCA.
Intelligent Mobility MA Visiting Design Fellowship Programme
Launched in 2023, the Intelligent Mobility MA Visiting Design Fellowship Programme welcomes three Fellows from Hyundai-Kia for a year long placement.
The Fellows work alongside the Intelligent Mobility MA students for the first academic term. They then work within the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre on individual research projects.
Hyundai-Kia Design and Innovation Project
This project will explore how the automotive industry can be transformed by sustainable design and evolve new solutions and strategies leading to holistic, system level transitions towards zero emissions. Specifically, it will explore how we can capitalise on the designer’s mindset to facilitate creative and radical approaches, interdisciplinary practice and adopt a more experimental and inquisitive way of working.
Sustainable design is a complex field with various sub-ideologies and approaches. The objective of the project is to develop circular automotive design solutions that consider environmental, economic, socio-ethic as well as subjective aspects of sustainability (quadruple bottom line).
Future Luxury
The inaugural project Future Luxury was performed in the academic year 2016/17 by the Centre and the Intelligent Mobility MA programme. The project looked at multiple facets of luxury and completed three sub-projects Immersive Luxury, Flagship and Renaissance resulting in an overview of future potential luxury trends from a variety of design disciplines such as textile, architecture, industrial design engineering and sculpture together with conceptual designs for future luxury vehicles and vehicle designs informed by luxury trends.
Emotional Tech
The 2018/2017 academic year’s “Emotional Tech” project applies emotional design as a research approach for investigating how people feel about state of the art and new emerging mobility technologies, designing satisfying disruptive mobility experiences that capture and enable the essence of the freedom of the road.
MORPH
The 2019/2020 academic year’s ‘MORPH’ project explores a mobility trend which may completely reshape vehicle-user relationships, the design of vehicles and the mobility market: Shared Mobility. The MORPH project was set up to answer questions that have been lingering in the future forecasting of mobility design and monetisation strategies for many manufacturers and industry pioneers around mobility, ownership, relationship, personalisation, hospitality.
