MIT Car

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the idea of mobility in the urban context was re-examined through an on-going concept car project. This intensive study on advanced human traveling has been in progress since 2003. Designed for fluid movement in downtown cores, the concept car research is designed for passengers to navigate the city intelligently and ecologically. This project comprises the testing and making of a vehicle which re-invents the car as an object, and redefines the user's relationship to metropolitan patterns. The intention was to take the design process “out of the box," of automotive design alone. The prototype will be designed from a new perspective: that of architecture, energy, ecology, urban planning, and urban design. The project was formally led by architect Frank O. Gehry. General Motors has been responsible for much of the support and resources as well as the MIT Design Lab, Smart Cities Group, and MIT Media Lab. Research developed for the concept vehicle is divided into four main groups: City Car, Athlete, Zero Car, and Transology [http://www.archinode.com/transology.html] . The final show car will be presented at MIT. [http://cities.media.mit.edu/]

See also

* Concept car
* Automotive design
* Sustainable transport
* Alternatives to the automobile

References

*Jeff Byles, "Taking Back the Streets," New York Times Magazine, April 6, 2008. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/nyregion/thecity/06stre.html?_r=2&ref=thecity&oref=slogin&oref=slogin]

*"The Best Inventions Of The Year: Compacted Car," Time, 2007. [http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1677329_1677971_1677986,00.html?imw=Y]

*Geeta Dayal, "A Sheep at the Wheel," Intersection, Issue 03 p. 78-79, 2006.

*Phil Patton, "At M.I.T., Rethinking the Car for City Life," The New York Times, p. D9, Mon. 9.6.2004. [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/automobiles/06CARS.html?ex=1181793600&en=f0320328811a2f24&ei=5070]

*Douglas Belkin, "2050 Future Shock: Soft Car" The Boston Globe Magazine, Sun. 01.02.2005. [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/01/02/soft_car/]

*Jessie Scanlon, "The Guru of Impossible Engineering Creates a Car," Popular Science pp. 105-9, Sept. 2004. [http://www.popsci.com/popsci/futurecar/23c09aa138b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html]

*Axel Kilian, Mitchell Joachim, Patrik Künzler, Peter Schmidt, "Development of an Articulated Vehicle Chassis the H-type," Game Set and Match II, Kas Oosterhuis & Lukas Feireiss(ed.), Episode, NL, 2006.

*Mitchell Joachim, Axel Kilian, William J. Mitchell, "Transology: Reinventing The Wheel," Car Body Design, April, 2007. [http://www.carbodydesign.com/detail.php?id=742]

*Ryan Chin, Patrick Künzler, William Lark, "City Car: A New Design Approach Enabling Urban Mobility," SAE Technical Papers, No.2006-21-0076. [http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2006-21-0076]

*Sean Snyder, "MIT Moves Forward with Smart Cities and Stackable Cars" Design News, May 15, 2007. [http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6442404]

*Bradford McKee, "Gehry and MIT: Click and Drive," The New York Times, Page D3, Thur. 8.5.2004.

*Dipesh Gadher, "Padded cars hail crunch-free future," The Sunday Times, U.K., Aug. 15, 2004.

*Tom Chiarella, "The Future of Driving," Esquire Magazine, pp.180, 244, Dec. 2006.

*"The Car, From An Urban Designer's Perspective," PLAN #59, MIT Newsletter, Fall 2004.

*Alexandra Kahn, "MIT group presents research on city car of the future," MIT news office, September 1, 2004.

External links

* [http://design.mit.edu/index.html MIT Design Lab]
* [http://cities.media.mit.edu/ MIT Smart Cities Group]
* [http://architecture.mit.edu/descomp/ MIT Architecture: Computation WORKS]
* [http://destech.mit.edu/akilian/projectpages/conceptcar.html MIT Concept Car Designs w/ Axel Kilian, Ph.D.]
* [http://www.archinode.com/mitcar1.html MIT Concept Car Designs, w/ Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D.]
* [http://web.mit.edu/francov/www/car01.html MIT Concept Car Designs w/ Franco Variani]
* [http://www.media.mit.edu/events/di-2004-10-22/wjm2004-1022.pdf Media Lab kit]
* [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/news_events/futuristics/auto/22.html University of California, Berkeley: transportation futuristics]
* [http://www.designerspace.com/pages/3-designerspace/design/i/32706/largeview.html Designer Space MIT/GM Frank O. Gehry Car]

Academic papers

* [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/37577 Ecotransology : integrated design for urban mobility by Mitchell Joachim, PhD]
* [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33803 Design exploration through bidirectional modeling of constraints by Axel Kilian, PhD]
* [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/32506 City-Car : optimizing vehicle and urban efficiencies through a shared adaptive platform by William Lark]
* [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/28774 Product grammar : construction and exploring solution spaces by Ryan Chin]
* [http://web.media.mit.edu/~peter/master_thesis_peter_schmitt.pdf Just Build It! A Fully Functional Concept Vehicle Using Robotic Wheels by Peter Schmitt]