Futuristic Ferraris Explored at the Petersen Museum
The main focus of the newly renovated Petersen Automotive Museum is to explore the history of the automobile and its impact on American life. But another important aspect is the education of the young, as they explore what they want to do in life.
One of its main educational programs is its relationship with the ArtCenter College of Design, the most famous of the world’s design schools, and the leader in the teaching of transportation design. Many of the world’s leading automobile designers have come, and still come, from ArtCenter.
The renovated Petersen now features a 2,000 square foot ArtCenter satellite studio with two classroom environments that replicate those at the College’s landmark campus in Pasadena. In the Traditional Media studio, students use essential design tools to begin the design process and in the New Media studio students use digital tools and technologies to bring their designs to life. The ArtCenter studio is an active learning space where current transportation design students interact with museum attendees and demonstrate different components of design while working on real projects.
On a recent visit there, we saw two of these designs brought to life, in the form of futuristic Ferraris. The yellow example is a Senior Thesis from Andreas Jakubec, and is a painted clay model. The red example is also a Senior Thesis, this one by Adriano Raeli. Both specimens are decidedly futuristic, but are thoughtful and well-balanced, meaning that they could be competently translated into real automobiles some day. (Given the advanced designs of some of the supercars at the recent Geneva Auto Show, these two samples are not unrealistic anymore. Beside the avant garde concepts of both models, they still incorporate a high degree of neat details, meaning the two students gave much thought to both appearances as well as functionality.
The studio hosts courses from the degree program as well as from the College’s Public Programs, including ArtCenter for Kids, ArtCenter for Teens and ArtCenter at Night, allowing kids, teens and adults from across Greater Los Angeles to take introductory Industrial and Transportation Design courses in this exciting studio space at the Petersen. Additionally, thousands of school children touring the museum each year will have the opportunity to learn about design and consider pursuing it as a career option.
Visit the ArtCenter at www.artcenter.edu, and visit the Petersen at www.petersen.org.
