College Exhibition: IED Degree Show 2009

Graduating students from the three-year post-graduate Transportation Design course at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Turin, Italy presented a tribute to the Aston Martin brand for their graduate theses. Called "Aston Martin 2025", 17 students in the post-graduate course - led by Fulvio Fantolino, IED's Transportation Design Course Coordinator - employed exclusivity, elegance, sporting style and the idea of sharing and emotion as their design keywords, developing a theme which ultimately saw 13 projects created in Alias or in clay.

Aston Martin Design Director Marek Reichman provided the students with useful indications for the final development and a further selection led to the short listing of eight projects that were then produced in 1:4 scale models thanks to collaboration with Cecomp. The remaining five were developed as virtual models. Though the students were not imposed constraints with regards to the car's packaging or architecture, one condition had to be met: the technology involved in the car's design had to be feasibly developed within the next five years.

Luxury Cocoon Concept
Alessandro Bersi, Maxime Céleriér, Lorenzo Lazzarini and Paolo Liuzzi
The Luxury Cocoon Concept finds its origins at a time when luxury wasn't flaunted, yet it was still present and opulent. Bersi, Céleriér, Lazzarini and Liuzzi have achieved this balance by blending nature with technology. As the Aston Martin brand has always been considered synonymous with sobriety and simplicity, the concept's creators sought to rouse deep, visual emotions for a few lucky individuals who see their car not only as a means of transport, but also by optimizing the relationship between technology and nature. This creates a stronger relationship between the car and its owner.

Libido: Amore e Psiche
Giuseppe Barbera, Andrea Guerri and Federico Vecchiatini
According to the Libido's designers, everything needs its opposite to exist, harmony is just the meeting of them. In 2025, the target year of the concept, humanity will still consist crazy passion as well as controlled reason and people will continue to attain both, idealizing a harmonized equilibrium. Harmony sculpted in the dramatic embrace of Eros and Psyche, respectively the impulsive and cool-headed side of people, evolves into the sculpture by Antonio Canova "Amore e Psiche". We read this frozen moment like the flash of something that is never happening except inside our thoughts, driving us to follow an eternal dream of perfection.

Symbiosis concept
Marcello Bertoldi, Hong Seob An, Michele Luciani and Matteo Tinfena
Symbiosis, the relationship between two different species of organisms that are independent, each gaining benefits from the other, is a common element of nature. The creators of this project sought to offer the user an opportunity: the chance to go back to the origins of Aston Martin, when cars were created to be adapted to natural conditions. The symbiosis between man, nature and automobile was re-interpreted and revalued, with these three elements in perfect balance.

Gotha concept
Fabio Burrelli, Carlo Cauchi and Dario Liotine
Burrelli, Cauchi and Liotine imagined a near future in which cynicism prevails, a transposition of a situation already present on a global scale, but focused on the city of London. The concept that came out of this vision is meant to underline the absurdity of amoral and merciless behaviors innate in mankind, the insane conviction of rising above everything else. The 2025 scenery takes on the architectural features typical of the gothic, sharpened in their tension toward the sky, as well as man who, due to his inborn yearning, tries to attain it.

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By Eric Gallina