Audi art featured in top design museum

Munich, Ingolstadt:Audi has merged technology and art - literally - as it has unveiled its Sport Quattro concept coupe as a sculpture in Die Neue Sammlung, The International Design Museum Munich. This comes just a day after premiering the pioneering show car at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

Some 1,800 models of the Ur-quattro, which are made from pure aluminium, form a carpet that symbolises Audi's history. The models were manufactured in a small production run, drawing on Audi's toolmaking expertise.

Die Neue Sammlung, the design museum located within the Pinakothek der Moderne (a modern art museum situated in the city centre of Munich, Germany), and Audi, a car manufacturer that is the embodiment of good design, are open to experiments.

Following the successful exhibition, 'Design Icons', staged by Die Neue Sammlung at the Audi Forum Neckarsulm, since September, Audi has been guesting in the Pinakothek der Moderne with a wall installation. The installation called the Audi design wall will form part of the Permanent Collection of Die Neue Sammlung for at least five years.

Aluminium

Aluminium is the epitome of lightness and stability. Audi has been closely associated with aluminium expertise in the automotive engineering field for many years. For the Audi installation, each of the 1,800 models of the legendary Ur-quattro forming the 'aluminium carpet' weighs around 860 grams, and were cut away from a seven-kilogram block of aluminium. The future of the Audi brand rises up from foundations formed of these aluminium Ur-quattros.

The sculpture evoking the Audi Sport quattro concept soars vertically. The show car translates quattro technology and its tradition in motorsport into a futuristic formal idiom. A mirror suspended on the ceiling allows visitors to explore the installation from an unusual perspective.

"The Audi design wall visualises the bridge between the past and the future of our brand," explained Professor Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, AUDI AG Member of the Board of Management for Technical De-velopment. The common thread is quattro technology, which defines Audi more than any other. The work was devised by the Audi Design team specifically for this room in the Pinakothek der Moderne. "We created the Audi design wall with the passion of an artist and exercised maximum precision in visualising the core technology of quattro," commented Hackenberg in describing its evolution.

The idea for the exhibit itself came from an internal competition among Audi designers. The challenge was to come up with an object that communicates with the onlooker. The Audi design wall is also visible to passersby outside the museum.

collaboration

The exhibition object documents the intensive collaboration between two partners from the worlds of industry and culture. "As a design-oriented carmaker, Audi is an ideal partner for Die Neue Sammlung. We plan to continue infusing the partnership with life over the coming years," declared Professor Dr Florian Hufnagl, director of Die Neue Sammlung.

The museum, which opened in 1925 and now has a collection of more than 80,000 objects, ranks as the oldest and largest design museum in the world.

Article courtesy of ATL Automotive Limited.