About the centre
Established from a renowned centre of excellence in automotive design, the IMDC’s mission is to create a new mobile future for social, environmental and economic good through design and research.
The IMDC is an interdisciplinary centre exploring, experimenting, prototyping and evaluating new mobility and automotive transitions via the synthesis of design and research methods. It integrates design and technology with insights into people and the social, environmental and economic context to enable a 360 view on the design of future mobility.
The IMDC is organised into three distinct yet complementary Studios enabling a multifaceted perspective on mobility design:
- The Automotive Transitions Studio is focussed on vehicle design and explores the paradigm shifts of the car industry, its transition to a focus on sustainability and its connection with car design heritage, material culture, fashion and people’s aspirations.
- The Humanising Technology Studio explores how mobility experiences and services may be transformed by the impact of emerging technologies and how these can be made accessible, usable, and enjoyable by understanding people and leveraging creative methods.
- The People & Places Studio explores the relationships between society, place-making and our transport systems and how design might respond to this relationship through new forms of architecture and sustainable mobility products, services and experiences.
The IMDC collaborates with business, academic, government and voluntary sector partners and exchanges knowledge via education, events, publications and industrial collaboration and strategic partnerships. The partnership with Hyundai-Kia is the inaugural industry funded Innovation Lab at the IMDC. Hyundai Motor Group and its Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands, has partnered with IMDC to foster the creative exploration of the future of mobility.
The IMDC is the first of a new generation of research centres established to mark the Royal College of Art’s transformation into a dynamic STEAM focused (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) postgraduate university. Uniquely, the Centre incorporates the Intelligent Mobility MA programme bringing together researchers and students to cultivate excellent research and design outputs. Via the MA programme, it is pioneering new teaching in a subject area traditionally focused on design skills rather than research focused.