Describe a material that cannot exist.

Type it in any language. A surface sculpture wears it in real time, with a passport for a finish no lab can mix yet.

Material passportUM-26-0001

Blushing Chrome

羞铬

“chrome that blushes when you look at it”

Visualisation: a frameless, seamless six-metre P2 LED wall on a slim black base stands centred in front of the steel-and-glass lattice of the BMW Welt double cone, showing an abstract sculpture of hovering car-surface fragments in iridescent violet-to-teal paint; a visitor types at a pillar to the left — Visualisation · The Material Hall: a 6 m LED wall in the BMW Welt hall, the sculpture wearing what the visitor typed

Where it lives

One engine, three rooms.

Brand hall · Munich

The Material Hall

A six-metre surface sculpture at the centre of the hall. Visitors speak a material, the sculpture wears it within seconds. The ceiling keeps every finish of the day as a slow, drifting archive.

Trade fair · Shanghai / Beijing

千色 Qiān Sè · a thousand finishes

Bilingual, built for queues, forty seconds per guest. Everyone leaves with their finish: a printed passport and a palm-sized sculpture wearing it. Made to be posted.

Lobby · design studio

The Brief Machine

The same engine as a permanent lobby piece and as a sparring tool for colour & trim teams. Impossible briefs as the starting point for real ones.

Why it matters

Every material typed is a signal: which colours, effects and feelings people reach for when nothing is off-limits. Logged by city, by hour, by language. An installation that is also a research instrument.

We have built the body before

AUVOTS, 2018.

The first virtual car surface sculptures: bodies that carry paint like a car, without being one.

Designed by Zeitguised for BASF Coatings, in five phases, from real car proportions to pure surface. The small models on the table come from that series. For 25 years the studio has made materials visible before they exist, and creates the key visuals of the annual Automotive Color Trends.

AUVOT study: orange folded body shell with punched holes

AUVOT study: red and violet body split open, a stack of tyres in its middle

AUVOT study: violet body, its four wheels set on the flank

AUVOT study: smooth green pebble-shaped body

AUVOT study: silver wave slab with a violet fender, human figures for scale

AUVOT study: silver body on one front wheel, the rear arch left open

AUVOT study: sand-coloured matte body, faceted

AUVOT study: red body balanced on a single wheel

AUVOTS process renders, Zeitguised for BASF Coatings, 2018