The scandinavian interior : The aestetic of the use

For this master degree project I have confronted the phenomenon of a new generation of users who identify themselves more with services they can reach than with things they actually own. Such insight relates to both an increasing environmental awareness and socio-economical factors that conflict with the way the automotive industry has been developing. Commercial vehicles are a segment that could logically benefit from applying a service-approach to its design and development process. What is the aesthetic that derives from the needs of these future users? That has been the main question and focus of my thesis. My goal was to explore such aesthetic in a tangible application in the interior design of a multi-purpose van. I partner with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles in this process. My conclusion is that the “Aesthetic of Use“ lies in a triangularity of vehicle architecture, surface treatment and flexibility of usage. With this understanding I developed an “evaluation key” to help me judge the ideation material in order to select the best design proposal to illustrate a service based vehicle for VW. The chosen interior design proposal represents a modular system offering two distinct configurations: Labour and Premium. The Labour architecture could be upgraded by applying and changing rentable components and would act as the base for the Premium version. The modular principle of this architecture would allow to serve the different needs of the users by mixing and combining these components