Toyota's "window to the world" concept wins 2012 core77 design award

The concept, by engineers and designers from the Kansei Design Division¹ of Toyota Motor Europe and the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), aims to re-define relationships between passengers and the world surrounding the vehicle. Using augmented reality, the concept transforms the vehicle's windows into an interactive surface, giving information about the surroundings as they pass or act as a drawing canvas.

Core77 define the Speculative award category as "projects that are pure concepts or proposals, whether self-initiated for fiction, discourse, intervention or exploration, or created as exploratory/speculative designs for a client or educational institution."

"Window to the World" was chosen as the winner of the award following a unanimous verdict by the jurors with head juror Bruce Sterling, author of "Beyond the Beyond" at Wired, citing that the concept "is a well-realised piece of mainstream corporate design fiction from Toyota." He added that it is "poetic rather than looking like an up sell from a car company."

Toyota's North American entry, named "Prius x Parlee", also received a notable mention in the Transportation category. As part of the Toyota Prius Projects initiative, in collaboration with Saatchi LA, Parlee Cycles and Deep Local in the United States, the resulting project is the world's first thought-controlled shifting bicycle.

For more information about Toyota's "Windows to the World" concept, please visit: http://bit.ly/2011wttw

See the concept in action in this video simulation: http://bit.ly/2011wttwv

For more information about the 2012 Core77 Design Awards, please visit: http://www.core77designawards.com/2012/

¹ Kansei in the Japanese language means "sense" and "sensibility", or translating how one feels towards certain factors of a product. In Toyota, Kansei Design stands for "creating products appealing to the emotions" or "emotional design".

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