Alfa Romeo spyder

Internship project, Alfa Romeo ADUS, 2000.

Evolved sportiveness

Development of the design of interiors for a next gen spyder, inspired to the "evolved sportiveness" of Alfa Romeo.
In team with Francesca Furzi.
The design process involved a brainstorming phase, finding inspirational images and keywords, then translated into quick sketches and initial design concepts.
So we started thinking of an interior made like the one of a boat, with, wooden floor and a reclinable center rear seat, that could be open if needed, to enhance the sportive character of the car, to be used by two people only, but eventually could carry a third passenger.
As cars do not move for 92% of their life, they occupy public soil most of the time. Hence, why not to use an open car interior as a urban design element, giving some public utility to it?

Hence we decidaded to make all 3 seats reclinable and enclosed in shells when the car is parked, so it could be used as informal public seating.
Initially we made a kind of "cocoons", organic shapes, making a clay scale model of them. Then we moved to a simpler, edgy and fully retractable design, with the supporting cushions elements of the seat opening up as the seat was elevated from the closed position, in a single movement.
This led to the final design of the interior and the full scale foam mockup.

Final design