Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: in the next preview of our Dezeen and MINI Frontiers exhibition, we visit Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg at the RCA workshop where she's been making 112 miniature cars to create a "model ecosystem" of vehicles.
"I'm making 112 model cars. They are all part of this model ecosystem looking at the future of mobility and biology," says Ginsberg.
"The concept behind the project is imagining or speculating on a future where cars may be made out of biological materials. And how the way we make things, produce things and recycle things might actually change."
Ginsberg's idea is that, in a future of affordable and sustainable biodegradable materials, car production would become more localised and different design traits would emerge reflecting local climates, tastes and fashions.
"The first car would be the chassis that MINI would distribute, and there'd be a simple design for the shell of this car," she explains. "You'd send out the design to different countries and different locations, and in each country you'd have workshops or small distributed manufacturing plants making cars out of local materials."
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"You start to see there are traits diversifying, mutating. The cars themselves aren't evolving, but the decisions made by humans about the design of them is what is actually starting to show biological adaptation and mutation."
Ginsberg is using different resins to produce her model cars, which she is customising with a variety of different shells.
"There are some that have got raincoats made out of latex, some of them are going to have little sun visors made out of wood," she says. "It's been really fun to be allowed to be very playful with the design language and make quite a lot of mess in the process."
The Dezeen and MINI Frontiers exhibition will take place at designjunction during London Design Festival from 17 to 20 September 2014.
Ginsberg's project for the exhibition is supported by SynbiCITE, Imperial College London.
The music featured in the movie is a track called Contemphasic by Bankcee. You can listen to more original music on Dezeen Music Project.
Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.
