Spheres. Perspectives in Precision & Poetry for BMW designed by Alfredo Häberli.

At this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, one of the world’s premier design events, BMW Design will be making its mark once again with a collaborative venture. Zurich designer Alfredo Häberli has teamed up with the BMW Design team led by Karim Habib and Martina Starke – and under the overall direction of Adrian van Hooydonk – to create an installation based on a multi-layered interpretation of the BMW Design leitmotif “Precision & Poetry”. Adrian van Hooydonk says of the project: “Alfredo Häberli approaches our design philosophy with an ingenious passion and conceptual clout. I always enjoy philosophising with Alfredo on design and mobility, and I’m delighted to see these ideas now taking shape in an installation as well.” Using personal recollections and experiences of cars, Alfredo Häberli elevates the theme of mobility to an associative plane. Against the background of highly automated control, he imbues the driving experience with new meaning and renders it tangible within an impressive spatial dimension. How will we use and shape motion, encounter, time and space? At the centre of his journey into the immediate future of mobility is a large-scale, deliberately abstract object whose form cites the lightness of forward motion and whose design addresses pivotal values of future automotive design: technically everything is feasible, the luxury of movement focuses on the core statement, mobility becomes carefree and communicative. The BMW Group Design team promotes active discourse with internationally renowned designers and, through this particular collaboration, once again looks beyond its own boundaries: “In Alfredo Häberli we have a design partner who addresses our leitmotif ‘Precision & Poetry’ with an unusual depth and from a highly personal angle,” says Karim Habib, Head of Design BMW Automobiles. As part of the project, Alfredo Häberli looks at the BMW Group’s development laboratories and model workshops. Guided by his affinity to materials, the installation dissolves the traditional concept of space so as to express itself in free forms and mobility scenarios. “The installation is a three-dimensional discourse on the theme ‘Precision & Poetry’ – combined with my poetic response to the theme of luxury,” says Häberli of his work. Häberli has spent more than half a year working on his concept, which has spawned numerous sketches, documents and models while projecting the themes of mobility and luxury into the future by means of an intense analytical investigation. Liberated from technical constraints and abandoning the material realm, Alfredo Häberli has succeeded in developing a new understanding of mobility – one that can be experienced in Milan in a quite unique way. The installation “Spheres.Perspectives in Precision & Poetry for BMW designed by Alfredo Häberli” will be on show in Milan as part of the Salone del Mobile from 14 to 19 April 2015.