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Friday, 18 September 2009 | Levent OZLER
BMW Group DesignworksUSA Takes Design Excellence to City Streets
with Introduction of Landscape Forms Metro40
People are in motion all around the globe. Managing people in motion and helping cities provide the comfortable, attractive, high-quality facilities and amenities required to build a broader constituency for public streetscapes and public transit was the starting point for the partnership between BMW Group DesignworksUSA and Landscape Forms, North America's leading designer and manufacturer of site furniture for outdoor spaces. This first collaboration creates a range of essential furnishing elements for urban transit cores. The global collection which will be sold under the name Metro40 is the most complete collection on the market and includes furniture, shelters, lighting, and amenities, and has been developed for use by city planners and architects to help global urban centers elevate the livability, quality of experience, design appeal and overall image of their public transit systems.
DesignworksUSA's experience in automotive and other types of design for mobility, from airplanes to trains to yachts, provides a comprehensive understanding of global transportation demands. Additionally, DesignworksUSA is known as experts in translating a company's brand values and business benefits into emotional design statements. Landscape Forms brings expertise in urban streetscape furniture and amenities of exceptional quality. Both firms share a deep commitment to design excellence and sustainability in materials, structures and processes, all of which is apparent in Metro40.
"Bringing great design to public, seemingly anonymous spaces such as transit shelters promotes a very positive, personal impact on people's moods and daily quality of life," says Verena Kloos, President, BMW Group DesignworksUSA. "Urban gentrification projects such as the new High Line park in Lower Manhattan demonstrate the importance and value of making cities more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing for their citizens, and the exploration of this dynamic made the Metro40 project with Landscape Forms particularly compelling for DesignworksUSA," she concludes.
Global Function and Aesthetics
DesignworksUSA's multidisciplinary studio in Munich led the design with input from the Singapore and Los Angeles studios to develop Metro40. DesignworksUSA provided product design, strategy, and research. Metro40 sets a new standard for function and aesthetics in the transit site furniture category. Creating a signature style for Metro40 is a daunting task when one considers the multitude of environments where it must appear in sync, and "at home," with its surroundings. Cultural behaviors vary tremendously from city to city, as does architecture and climate. The extreme requirements of wear and tear are also a major consideration. Further, all products were designed in accordance with Landscape Forms' strict environmental standards for BIFMA and LEED certification.
Details in Design
Inspired by mobility, Metro40 has a dynamic design language that expresses the central themes of modern transit: movement and flow, continuity and change. As a result, graceful, continuous shapes are integrated into all elements of the collection. The dynamic, organic profiles twist and wrap in unexpected ways to cause visual excitement and tension. Accelerating curves create a sense of positive motion and energy, and give each individual piece an element of surprise. Since these products will be typically in use for 10 -15 years, the design language integrates both contemporary and future contexts for a timeless effect.
While the elements of the Landscape Forms Metro40 share a common design vocabulary, DesignworksUSA has endowed each piece with a unique personality and expressiveness. Some are immediate eye catchers intended for the foreground, whereas others are more discreet to serve as the background.
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