Interieur 2012: British designer Ross Lovegrove presented a futuristic concept car shaped according to instinct rather than science at the Interieur design biennale in Kortrijk, Belgium, last week (+ movie).

For his response to the design biennale's theme of Future Primitives, Lovegrove created a fibre glass model with Italian concept car designers G-Studio and suspended it from the ceiling to act as a 3D screen for a series of video projections.

Its smooth form is a combination of the Pininfarina CNR concept car from the 1970s and the natural shape of a water droplet.

"There is a moment of convergence between these forms where a genesis form appears almost as a discovery point at which fluid dynamics, aerodynamics and human form meet to reveal a volume that is more akin to a biological species than a mechanical one," Lovegrove told Dezeen.

Above: photograph by Dezeen

"When we passed this form through the labs," he continued, "the result was what I term 'instinctive overide' – a breakthrough in accepting one's instinctive primordial reflex response to form, over and above science and its calculation."

Above: photograph by Dezeen

The video projections were designed by Lovegrove with the assistance of Biothing, a UK-based computational design laboratory, to wrap around the curved form of the car and give the illusion of a three-dimensional free-floating image.

"What this achieves is a sense of motion, lightness and almost aquatic serenity, a gentleness not felt when standing next to a contemporary car, where intuition and emotion are suppressed by the physical complexity, weight and often cold aggression of its construction," added Lovegrove.

Other Future Primitives installations include an illusory arcade created with beams of light and fresnel lenses and a carbon fibre prototype of a rotating cocoon for compact living.

Above: photograph by Wouter Van Vaerenbergh

We recently reported on Lovegrove's silver spaceship installation in the rafters of Lille railway station in France.

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Above: photograph by Dezeen

Photographs are by Simona Cupoli except where stated.

Here's some more information from the designer:

For the 23rd edition of the prestigious Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk, Ross Lovegrove has been invited to conceive a project room in which to present a car concept. Seven worldwide renowned designers, architects, and artists will be challenged on this exhibition, titled Future Primitives, opening on October 20th.

For this occasion, Ross Lovegrove is projecting a remarkable video created by Biothing onto an innovative Genesis vehicle form, named Future Primitivism/Instinctive Overide, presented as a moving shape. To realise such an advanced vehicle, the British designer has collaborated with an Italian engineering laboratory that consults with NASA and therefore has gained a major experience in reflecting about the shape and technology behind the means of transport.

In the video the car shape, the air and space around it andits light reflections are so unified that they become indistinguishable for human beings. This unconventional and forward-looking project is realised following a diverse path in respect of engineering a vehicle. In the words of the designer: "Future Primitivism/Instinctive Overide represents a soft slow silent walk to view an object through the evolutionary spirit of mankind and its knowledge passed down through intuition and factors that seem more religious than mathematical.'

Above: photograph by Dezeen

Ross Lovegrove's statement:
My interest in the nature of form, its purpose and evolution has led me to a place where art, design, science and technology converge in this installation. I have a deep, deep interest in primitive forms, in fact, what I term pre-linguistic forms that move people without explanation or any kind of premeditated, pre-conceived manipulation of thought.

The references taken are those not really from design, because I am trying to break free from the commercial objectives of design which often arrive for me at an achingly obvious false insincerity, not true to the embedded reflexes that still lie profoundly inside our primordial memory and neurology.

Above: photograph by Wouter Van Vaerenbergh

Capturing that event horizon moment where all the logic of scientific endeavour is confronted by the human consciousness that simply tells us its right or wrong. The free decision of the creative mind to totally override data and to say "no, this is how it should be". In praise of instinct, that lost soul of design... a gift way beyond education, into the clouds of a higher order, a relativity if you like, created first through the eyes and then into a vast void we call the mind... taking a soft slow silent walk to view an object
through the evolutionary spirit of mankind and its knowledge passed down through intuition and factors that seem more religious than mathematical.

So into a new place where dromology confirms our existence, the fantastic historical connect between the hand and mind, those relationships I love... where all things are considered now in the form of human containment experienced from a sense of the internalised form holding humans in dialogue with the extrinsic forces of speed and light.