'in progress'
grand-hornu images, belgium
on now until september 12th, 2010

designboom visited the exhibition 'in progress' at grand-hornu images, belgium,
a show which brings together nine international designers to explore the idea of progress.
on this occasion, the selected designers have produced a response to the theme in the form
of prototypes, micro-architectures, graphical installations or objects that explore the idea
of progress, discussing issues of technology, mobility, consumption, the rituals of life and death,
well-being, innovation and the environment.



image © designboom


for belgian-swiss-based design studio big game progress is inseparable from the instant
in which it takes place. for their project 'shapes', they were interested in the automobile
as an elemental component of our society's quotidian existence. their aim is to give children
a formal directory of the different advances in this domain. they adopted a deliberately
retrospective approach, composed of a selection of car designs realized as scale models.
departing from the premise that a typology carries meaning, 'shape' presents the formal
evolution of these objects, revealing the historical preoccupations to which they are tied.
this aspect is reinforced by their decision to include utopias among their references,
each capturing a given era's vision of progress. in the same way, a collection of new propositions -
designed to unsettle the series as whole - is integrated.







image © designboom


automobile design, has a reputation for being unusually focused on style. it is interesting
to confront this characteristic with the fact that the automobile has always been on the
front lines of industrial innovation. even the concept of body work implies an approach
to design that transforms the object from the outside in, prompting us to ask formal questions.
it recalls the universe of toys, referring to the child's unique intuitive and formal perceptions
of the car.

the 'shape' series consists of 17 miniature car models in maple. the represented typologies
are either historical or utopian and express the preoccupations of their time. here, big-game
has integrated five propositions for the future into the series, unsettling this equation.
the language of the models, sort of like space models where all details have been erased.
recall the method of automobile designers.







image © designboom


'shape' explains in part, the capital importance of the study model, particularly in this
realm of design. traditionally realized in clay - first in miniature and then on a 1:1 scale -
these objects are characterized by a degree of abstraction, with an erasure of details,
revealing the general form lying beneath. the aim was to recreate this phenomenon with
the car models, representing a sort of traffic jam.








image © designboom






image © designboom






image © designboom



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