Hosoya Schaefer Architects, Zürich, teamed up with Shiftcontrol, Copenhagen, and Büro Destruct, Bern, to create a media installation on automobility for Autostadt Wolfsburg, a subsidiary of Volkswagen. The research and graphic work of Hosoya Schaefer has been brought to life in interactive three-dimensional graphics illustrating topics like ‘highway city’ or ‘oil world’, with the aim of providing critical information rather than straightforward corporate communication.

Since its invention the car has always been about more than just movement. The automobile and auto-mobility have brought about a whole range of phenomena that, to a large extent, define our society. It has produced new infrastructures, innovations and cultures. In many places in the world, life without a car is not thinkable or worse, as in the large suburban developments in the industrialized nations, not possible.

While cars are getting more secure, comfortable and attractive for individuals, on a global level automobility reaches its limits. Industries are changing. Resources and spaces are becoming scarce. Global risks, like climate change, are becoming apparent.

In order for individual mobility to retain the role it has today, automobility needs to be reinvented fundamentally. New efficiencies, multi-modal transport systems, energy sources, behaviours and cultural values need to be developed, especially when faced with the huge potential demands in emergent economic powers like China and India .

The project shows in encyclopaedic breadth topics that define contemporary mobility. The topics are organized in three large chapters (culture, economy and system) and twelve themes ranging from mobile space to fuel. Each theme again is examined in the scale of the car, the region, the world and time. Throughout the themes, the project intends to show the link between individual experience and global effects.

Each one of the four stations consists of three touch screens and one large LCD wall display. Shiftcontrol developed the application in Unity, a game development environment. Hence all animations are rendered in real-time and fully interactive. The three touch screens on the control panel allow for selecting a topic, interacting with the display on the wall, reading texts and browsing all source data.

The installation is part of MobiGlobe, which also contains a 360 degree cinema with six screens arranged like the window panes in a car. The physical installation has been conceived by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, New York, the films produced by Condor Communication, Zürich.

Currently Hosoya Schaefer is working on consulting and building projects that continue the relationship with Autostadt and aim to propose responses to the issues depicted in the research. Markus Schaefer is also co-authoring a TV documentary on automobility and its limitations, funded by the Swiss Federal Department for Culture and co-produced by Condor Communication, Zürich, and Interscience Films / Gero von Boehm, Paris.

Contact for more information:

HOSOYA SCHAEFER Architects
Markus Schaefer
Reinhardstrasse 19
8008 Zürich
Switzerland

T. +41 (0)43 243 6313
F. +41 (0)43 243 6315
office@hosoyaschaefer.com
www.hosoyaschaefer.com