Hasta La Ideas

The speed and ease of driving Audi’s latest A7 in Los Angeles

Where other sedans in its class swaddle their passengers in cloud-like comfort down to pillowy handling, Audi’s A7 stands out for its adrenaline-revving performance and similarly bold design. First stepping into the car, the well-apportioned interior (and lack of a rear middle seat) immediately signals that this car is not for the child-toting but is a less versatile vehicle geared toward someone (or a couple) who wants to make a style statement.

Audi put a real emphasis on the design of the 2012 model (including sponsorship of our Audi Icons series), basing the exterior on three lines—a long roof, boat tail-shaped sill and shoulder line—that results in a sense of movement from front to back and meeting in the rear. The coupe-like design is comparable to that of a Mercedes CLS, but distinctive lighting with an emphasis on LEDs lends trademark Audi looks to the front and rear ends.

Inside, roomy leather seats that cradle you, details like the real woodgrain paneling and the quality feel of the controls make for the overall Audi experience that has made us fans, and earned the manufacturer top numbers for performance and sales in 2010. After seeing the impressive design details of the model at auto shows, we jumped at the opportunity to test drive it for a few days recently in Los Angeles.

Appearances aside, the real allure is the knife-like precision of the car’s German engineering. Audi’s Quattro all-wheel drive system shines in the A7, lending superior handling thanks to the way it “shifts torque instantaneously to where it’s needed.” That, combined with its low ground clearance, mean the vehicle takes turns fluidly at higher speeds than expected. With 310 horsepower in its 3-liter V6 engine, there’s plenty of guts for effortlessly hugging corners or just for pumping it from zero to 60 in 5.4 seconds, a fact also achieved by its smooth-shifting eight-speed transmission.

Fast and easy to drive, the A7 also boasts a number of in-car features that set it up as a car as equally ideal for commuting as it is for a longer weekend trip—perfect for a driving city like Los Angeles. (Though the over-six-foot passenger who rode with me did complain of a lack of lumbar support.) Tech innovations include a highly-intuitive interface for controlling audio, navigation and the like, led by Audi’s touchpad system that allows drivers to “write” out letters and numbers when entering addresses or phone numbers. Audi connect, an industry first, integrates Google Earth navigation with voice recognition, Google Local search and Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing drivers to check email, surf the internet and download videos.

With superior engineering and an interior that cradles you in luxury, the choice of similarly sporty hatchbacks starting around $60,000 MSRP is clear.

New obsessively process-oriented sculptures by a paper engineer

As teacher, paper engineer and artist Matt Shlian explains on his site, “researchers see paper engineering as a metaphor for scientific principals; I see their inquiry as basis for artistic inspiration.”
His geometric sculptures elegantly reflect this strong connection to the education and scientific communities, exploring the physicality of paper with his curiosity-driven approach.

Creating his work through problem solving and experimentation, Shlian’s deceptively simple aesthetic is the result of meticulous techniques and even more obsessive ideas. While restricting his palate to monochrome shades of white, Shlian’s intricate forms take on the complexity of natural design, suggesting the cellular lattices at the root of biological mechanics.

His new edition “The Process Series” is just that—a trio of works created by delving into the process of layering sheets of paper cut on a flatbed plotter cutter. Limited to an edition of 20 of each, the works sell from the Ghostly Store for $100 a pop.

Peel Engineering Company produced 50 of these microcars during the early 1960’s on the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom. They are the smallest cars ever to go into production. It’s got three wheels, one door, a 49cc engine with a three speed manual transmission. A Peel P50 could do 38 mph at max speed and weighed in at 130 lbs with a claimed fuel consumption of 100 miles to the gallon. Kind of amazing. Check out this article about the car in the Daily Mail. There have some great photos.

The next speaker in the David H. Liu Lecture Series in Design at Stanford is Dr. Jon Cagan.

Dr. Cagan is the director of Carnegie Mellon University’s graduate program in Product Development and a distinguished professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. Cagan has written two fantastic books on the topic of product development: Creating Breakthrough Products and The Design of Things to Come. Both books skillfully navigate the arc from the fuzzy front end of product development all the way up to program approval. The texts also bridge the chasm between qualitative and quantitative values in a way that is actually understandable. His Liu Lecture will be about the emerging research in the creative Design process and the role of emotion in product usage.

The talk will be at 8:00pm on Monday, May 4th, 2009. It will be in Braun Hall (Building 320) in Room 105. Hope to see you there!

Here’s the abstract:

Emerging research is uncovering the cognitive basis of creative design and the emotional basis of product usage. This talk will present studies in both of these areas. From the perspective of how designers create innovative solutions, we will look at a series of cognitive studies that uncover how designers utilize both useful and misleading information while carrying open goals of unsolved design problems. From the perspective of the person using the product, emotion plays a critical role. We will examine new methods to capture aesthetic preferences and agent-based computational tools that use those preferences to guide generation of preferred design forms.

poster design by Andreas Brændhaugen

click on the poster to view a larger size

I’m really excited to present the lineup for this Spring’s David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design.

All talks will begin at 8pm in building 320, room 105. Every lecture is free and open to the public!

Andy Spade will be speaking on Wednesday, April 15th. Spade had over a decade of experience with top advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, and TBWA/Chiat/Day managing accounts with companies such as Coca Cola, Evian, Reebok, Lexus, and Coach. He’s the branding and marketing man behind Kate Spade and Jack Spade (the companies that he and his wife created.) He has also been tapped to design the experiences of a number of companies including Delta’s Song Airlines and J. Crew retail experiment The Liquor Store. Spade’s latest project is Partners & Spade. It includes a highly conceptual retail experience in downtown Manhattan. Beyond all these business ventures, Spade is heavily involved in the art world. He is a patron to emerging artists, co-owner of a gallery, and curator of several exhibitions. Spade’s projects merge emotional branding, experience design, brilliant collaboration, and always a touch of surrealism.

Dr. Jonathan Cagan will be speaking on Monday, May 4th. Dr. Cagan is a co-director of the Masters in Product Development program at Carnegie Mellon and also the co-director for the school’s Center for Product Strategy and Innovation. He has the title of Barrett Ladd Professor in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds appointments in the School of Design and Computer Science. He has expertise in product development and innovation methods for early stage product development. Both his design methods and computer-based design research have been applied in a variety of industries. Dr. Cagan is the author of two books: Creating Breakthrough Products (co-authored with Craig Vogel), and The Design of Things to Come (co-authored with Peter Boatwright and Craig Vogel). He has consulted with a variety of small and large companies in diverse areas on product development, brand strategy, and strategic planning. He is co-founder and chief technologist of DesignAdvance Systems, Inc., a company focused on developing CAD software for the early synthesis processes. Cagan teaches New Product Development at Carnegie Mellon and runs executive training sessions in small and large companies.

Alex Wipperfürth will be speaking on Thursday, May 21st. Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and the upcoming The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in “consumer cults” (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.