Sustainability is now mainstream: demanded by legislation and expected by society, it has developed into a context within which all automotive design is inescapably produced.

Designers have a responsibility to respond to this context, because they influence consumer choices by using their own control over aesthetics to create desire.

These two factors mean that there is now a great potential for sustainability within automotive design  – designers can promote sustainable vehicles by making them desirable.

As sustainability becomes an increasingly desirable attribute in itself, the question is raised: What does sustainability look like?

The ways in which designers can address this question and exercise their influence responsibly are only just becoming clear. But if sustainable vehicles are to become mainstream, the uniquely emotional and aesthetic characteristics of automotive design must be maintained.

By seeking to illustrate vehicle manufacture, materials and life-cycle using purely visual means, this project proposes one potential aesthetic for a more sustainable vehicle – one that seeks to visually communicate sustainability and therefore facilitate a more informed judgement about the real sustainability of the vehicle.

This is undoubtedly just one aspect of an sustainable automotive future, and only one potential direction for sustainable aesthetics, but it suggests nonetheless a broader, exciting opportunity to develop designed responses to the sustainable mandate, and highlights the scope for much more development in this area.

Jonathon Henshall
jonathon.henshall@network.rca.ac.uk