schneiderism

I posted about the Mazda Furai concept, pictured above, back in January with regards to how it manifests Mazda’s Nagare, or “flow”, design language. Last week I came across a ton of content at the Car Design Blog with regards to Mazda design and what Nagare means to the organization. Mazda views Nagare as the physical manifestation of their brand and brand heritage, and has put tremendous emphasis on Nagare as the foundation of a future looking design language for the company. Of particular note are the descriptions of Mazda’s design process and the admission by Mazda’s global head of design, Laurens van den Acker, that to realize Nagare they had to break the golden rule of design, which is to simplify:

“Everybody will tell you to remove lines until you have no more left to remove. We are adding lines, which is kind of counter intuitive, but if we do it well it looks natural and creates beauty.”

Laurens van den Acker, General Manager Mazda Design

I don’t love this car. I love what this car represents, which is a significant departure from the mainstream in racing car design. Motorsports, and automobile design as a whole, seem dominated by incremental, and sometimes imperceptible, changes. This concept, the Furai from Mazda that debuted at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, is going its own way. It furthers the Mazda design team’s expression of its Nagare, or “flow,” design language that was unveiled earlier at the L.A. autoshow. The body of the car applies Mazda’s design language to achieve incredibly complex geometries that in some areas appear grotesque, while in others refined and beautiful. I especially enjoy the roof as presented in the image above. I want more building architecture that can achieve this elegantly complex folding and crossing.

The overall feel of the car is very organic… or alien. Your choice. After following automobile design and motorsports for just about my entire life it is exciting to see a manufacturer make a bold, radical move. It has been a while.

Here is the Furai looking tough in the pits: