The idea for the vehicle was inspired by an interest in creating a tranportation possiblity with an advanced design. The author had the fortunate opportunity to carry out an exam project at the automobile company Changan whose design department is in Turin, Italy. Changan produces almost exclusively passenger vehicles for the Asian market. The Asian auto user has shown a great interest in premium and personalised luxury qualities and at the same time demands unique safety aspects. As a result the author was inspired to design a vehicle which combined both aspects in a unique passenger vehicle for the future. Because of the masstransit situation in mega-cities the author felt inspired to test a new highway infrastructure possiblity in the conception of the vehicle design, the tunnel system. Classical hand drawings together with digital ideation drawing and 3D software models were the tools implemented for the design process. The work process was not linear starting with hand drawings and ending in complex computer models but took on a laborious path doubling back on and reworking all the different creative routes in a method which culminated in an end product. The end result is the Traveler, a shared auto service for two for 2050, a unique expansion on Changan´s historical production of passenger vehicles. The automoble is conceived as a two-compartment passenger transport option. Its size allows for different rider experiences: work, relaxation and entertainment while on the go. Because the passenger is in her/his own „room" there is a guaranty for complete privacy and ultimate safety from outside influence.

Volvo Abisko is proposing the possibility to experience the Arctic wilderness and the surrounding nature in a responsible way. The author has been hiking in the north, every time asking - what if everybody could experience this? Would it be possible to get into the wild with minimal impact on the environment? What if you wouldn’t need the expertise, the knowledge, or even the equipment to get into the pristine nature and to interact with the untouched Arctic? Volvo Abisko is representing the dream of offering this experience for a broader audience. Abisko - Ábeskovvu in the Same language - is one of the oldest national parks in Northern Sweden, which has been home to the Sami who followed herds of wilds between the forest land and the mountains. Ábeskovvu - “the forest by the great water”, where “the great water” refers to Scandinavia’s largest mountain lake Torneträsk. There were several moral questions during the process - is it the right choice to encourage people to visit these pristine areas? If the goal is to reduce the impact on nature, is it the right choice to create a physical service in such a fragile region? During the research and process, the decision was to design something that people can physically visit. Even if the digital appliances open a lot of opportunities, such as virtual traveling by virtual reality, the author believes that the experience is ideal when the user can engage all the senses to feel the surrounding nature. The idea of proposing sustainable development through design, instead of restricting access from people to certain regions, was quiding the project during the way. The creative process followed the boundaries set by the research, and the seamless functionality of the whole service was the priority. Analog sketching was the primary tool to discover shapes, and exploring the form in 3D helped to understand the space and to make multiple objects to work as one. The design focus of this project is transportation as a service, which is applied to the growing Arctic tourism sector. The concept includes an electric vertical takeoff vehicle (eVTOL) and a cabin, which is designed to be used with the vehicle. The vehicle enables a safe and exciting journey into the wild, letting the users observe the environment from the bird’s perspective. Eventually, the vehicle can land on the cabin, which is designed to give shelter for the users to spend time in the wild - being a base for a hiking adventure or just an attractive place to spend a night in solitude.

Every year over 1.35 Million lives are lost to road accidents. Trucks are probably the most dangerous vehicles on public roads due to their size and mass. 15% of all accidents involve trucks and the majority of victims are car occupants. Most of these accidents happen outside of urban areas at high speeds. In the dawn of autonomous drive and electromobility the trucking industry has the opportunity to reinvent their products. Volvo Trucks is a company that has Safety in its DNA. Future Volvo trucks could be tailored around Safety to save lives and bring justice to this core value. Autonomy has the potential to make road accidents history in the long run. Before that becomes a reality, society will face a transitioning period where autonomous vehicles will share the space with manually driven vehicles. Communication between human and machine will be more important that ever. Product Designers must account also for situations where an accident is unavoidable. The focus of this project is to explore what safety means for the human eye. How do we perceive safety visually and how do we create trust? Trucks are versatile products built with modularity in mind. Manufacturers are responsible for delivering a capable tractor unit. Trailers and other accessories are built externally. Throughout the process of this project a holistic approach was adopted. The only way to have full control over the product experience is to design a complete product: trailer and tractor unit. Volvo Trucks experts are consulted along the way covering key points of interest such as Passive Safety, User Experience Design and Aerodynamics. Benchmarking of existing concepts sets a starting point. Initial explorations question the architecture of conventional trucks. Different set-ups and layouts are proposed. Each decision is made based on various safety needs of the future semi-autonomous traffic. Analog sketches and digital renderings of design proposals build the way towards a key sketch. The chosen design direction is further developed and built in CAD. The vehicle is designed with an eye on its environment. The link between truck and car, truck and human is the core of this project. This vehicle sheds light on the mystery of how autonomous vehicles will blend with traffic as it is known today. Focusing on long haul highway routs Volvo VISE is designed to execute hub to hub transport services autonomously. Signals used to communicate in road traffic are translated to the digital age. By being able to understand its environment and react to it, Volvo VISE comes to life with a soul of its own. Through various sensors and autonomous technology the vehicle measures each traffic situation and earns the trust of its surroundings through clear communication of intent. With soft and generous shapes the exterior design describes a friendly vehicle that wins over its audience at the first glance. Volvo VISE has a deeper understanding of safety. Beneath the skin and besides its capability to communicate, the vehicle is equipped with several passive safety features, taking control in every situation. Volvo VISE ensures road safety for all.

The project originated with the question "What is the future of urban mobility?" and the counterquestion "What is the future of urbanity?". To understand the future of mobility, we first need to try to understand more of the future context where it'll reside. Mobility and the context it exists within are two symbiotic yet constantly evolving elements. This project seeks to speculate about their respective state in the year of 2050. Our global population keeps on growing, and more people are moving into urbanized regions. Already today more 90% of the worlds population is concentrated on roughly 10% of our planets land surface, and the density keeps increasing. To cope with the expanding population, cities need to keep growing and create sustainable infrastructure. The trend in densely populated regions has been to grow in the vertical axis. Besides just residential spaces, modern cities are starting to distribute shops, utilities and other typical city content vertically as well. City blocks and their content that used to be spread out in the horizontal plane are now increasingly being housed within compact hubs over multiple levels vertically. This project proposes the idea of a prototype sub-city within a mega city in the South East Asian region, around the year of 2050. Created as a way to prototype solutions to challenges found in hyper densely populated regions ranging from urban planning and congestion to general liveability. The fictional district has a highly vertically oriented cityscape, consisting of many interconnected highrises and megastructures. Traversing the walls of the buildings, vertically and horizontally, are vehicles propelled through magnetic levitation technology on an inductive infrastructure retrofitted onto or built into the buildings in the region. The far future, visionary setting of the project intends to provoke thoughts and reflection about an urban lifestyle within a far more vertically oriented environment. The thesis also aims to paint a picture of a car free city hub where vehicles are bound to the vertical plane, and the horizontal plane is devoted to the community of the city. Whether it's on the ground level or multiple stories up in a luscious "sky garden", the horizontal planes belong to the people and are roamed by foot. The process behind the development of the project involved research into the future setting and emerging technologies. Creative development and ideation were done using analogue as well as digital sketching, brainstorm sessions and physical and digital mockuping. The final vizualisations and compositions were designed from storyboards describing typical use cases of the vehicle. After researching topics of future cityscapes, creating the future premise of the project and ideating and refining various ideas, the end result of the thesis is Vertal Hex. A maglev propelled shuttle targetting future businesses. Travelling along the walls of the interconnected megastructures making up the future cityscape and company campuses, it allows it's passengers to reach their destinations anywhere within the hub entering right at the floor of their destination.

The project is highly inspired by the rise of vertical cityscape and how it can shape a new context for mobility to exist within. When the destinations travelled will be spread out in the vertical landscape instead of only the horizontal one. A rearrangement of housing, schools, restaurants and parks will create new needs for mobility to fill. In which the vehicles restricted to the two dimensional format of today can not. This will create a new era of vertical transportation to combat the densification of the future. The project investigates how new technologies such as magnetic levitation could be applied to architecture and open up space for vertical transportation. To give a flexible mobility system in high rise, high density urban areas. And with this create walkways thriving with nature on the horizontal planes. That promotes walkability, social connections and gives more space to people. For this to work, the project was set in the year of 2050 inside of a protoype district. By the reason to let the technology mature, this will also be a pivotal time of how to accommodate for the densification. Exploring how mobility would work and the everdaylives of the innhabitants in the district. The Project aims to provoke the perception of what a future urban area could be and how it would affect the need for transportation. When the premise was set, the mission was to create this new type of mobility, its functionality, its experience and of course a vehicle to convey these different elements. This was made through a number of ideation sessions, physical prototypes, hand sketches, digital sketches and digital modeling. Realizing it into an viable solution. The result of this project is Vertal Mono, A compact vehicle suited for the era of vertical transportation. It is designed to be a daily commuting vehicle within Vertico district, a prototype district testing vertically connected cityscapes. Mono is designed to be the smaller human footprint pod of the Vertal line up. It is nimble and flexible, being able to reach anywhere at any time. It is an essential part of mobility to the inner circles of the district and part of the communities living there. Vertal offers an on demand shared experience whether the occupant is riding for a single minute or for 15. The interior space offers great flexibility as a response to the vast range of usecases it needs to fulfill.

Architecture and mobility merge together to provide space for activities away from both home and office. The densification of people’s living space and the delocalisation of the workplace are two of the biggest emerging trends in the near future. Society is constantly changing with new needs and desires. The Internet of Things, new technologies and possibilities of autonomous driving enable new approaches to redesign the traditional car. The aim of this project is to rethink mobility and especially the car as we know it today. Since it has been shown that cars are no longer used exclusively as a means of transport, but also as mobile space, the image of the car as people know it could be redrawn Since BMW i is an innovative brand, which can break new ground, it can be ahead of its time and lead society instead of following it. After the first research and examination of relevant topics, the results were further developed and worked out. The system in which the concept takes place is defined in more detail based on further investigations such as scenario, marketplace and target group. The focus is mainly on the interior and exterior of the vehicle. In addition, an insight into the inspiration and the process of aesthetic design is described and illustrated in several sketches and renderings. Then the further development in 3D and VR (Virtual Reality) is shown up to the final digital model. iSpace is a system that brings attention to  the potential new role of the car in the coming years. iSpace is rather a mobile architecture than a conventional car, which means that it is used in a completely new and fresh way. The vehicle is designed to be used mainly in the static mode and offers the possibilities of a mobile space to support the flexible and delocalised lifestyle of people. In that sense it shows a completely new view how a vehicle could look like, while creating new kind of benefits to enrich and improve the quality of life. iSpace is part of a bigger system containing several vehicles to cover different types of needs and HUBs, which are the extension of the vehicles to various locations in urban areas.

Purpose: Industrial built modular housing is an off-site construction type, which means the modules are built in a factory and transported to the building site for assembly. The modules are built on an assembly line in a standardized and rationalized process. The modular building system has potential to lower the housing shortage, since it is more time and cost effective compared to traditional construction types. The disadvantage with the modular housing industry is that you often see poor exterior design results, due to the lack of flexibility in the system. Facades can be repetitive and have too large proportions. Therefore, the purpose of the work is to get an understanding of how the quality of exterior design can be improved in modular housing, by answering (1) How is the correlation between exterior design and modular building described by architects in the industry? (2) What are the restrictions for exterior design in modular housing? (3) How can the quality of exterior design in modular housing be developed, in regards to the restrictions of the building system? Method: A literary study is performed to identify the main restrictions and also the possibilities of development for modular housing. Combined with the literary study, interviews are being held with six respondents from the industry. The respondents explain their view on the correlation between exterior design and the modular building system. The interviews are also studying different buildings where the respondents have been involved. Findings: The technical restrictions are mainly the size of the modules due to transporting requirements and the joints between them. The ability to adjust to them are limited by the budget of the project. The projects tend to be more cost-oriented, rather than focusing on architectural quality and therefore the exterior design is suffering. To create good modular houses that give something back to the city, there must be a change in the industry. Contractors and the municipalities are the most important participants in this process. Implications: The biggest improvement possibilities that can make the most change in the future are; competition on the market, ambitious contractors, process and product development, higher municipal requirements and also new technical solutions that provide good design to a lower price.  Limitations: The result is limited to only exterior design in the modular housing industry, focusing on multi-family housing on the Swedish market. The study is a general analysis and does not go into depth on each problem. It is more meant to be a guideline to where the problem areas exist. / Syfte: Industriellt byggda volymhus är färdiginredda volymer som tillverkas i fabrik, som transporteras till byggplats för montage. Volymelementen tillverkas på ett löpande band i en standardiserad och rationaliserad process. Detta byggsystem kan bidra till att minska rådande bostadsbrist, då det är mer kostnads- och tidseffektivt jämfört med traditionella byggsystem. Man ser dock exempel på att den exteriöra utformningen blir lidande, på grund av den begränsade flexibiliteten som byggsystemet medför. Fasader kan exempelvis upplevas som enformiga, till följd av upprepningar av geometrier och för stora huskroppar. Därför är målet med arbetet att få förståelse för hur kvaliteten av den exteriöra utformningen av industriellt byggda volymhus kan utvecklas, genom frågeställningarna; (1) Hur beskrivs samverkan mellan exteriör utformning och industriellt byggande, av arkitekter i volymhusbranschen? (2) Vilka begränsningar finns vid volymhustillverkning för exteriör utformning på flerbostadshus? (3) Hur kan man utveckla utformningen av exteriören på volymhus, med hänsyn till de förutsättningar som industriellt byggande medför? Metod: En litteraturstudie genomförs för att identifiera huvudsakliga begränsningar samt utvecklingsmöjligheter för tillverkning av volymhus. Tillsammans med litteraturstudien genomförs intervjuer där sex respondenter från volymhusbranschen som förklarar sin syn på samverkan mellan god kvalitet på exteriör utformning och det industriella byggsystemet. I intervjuerna studeras även referensobjekt där den aktuella respondenten varit involverad. Resultat: De tekniska begränsningarna är i huvudsak transport som styr storleken på volymen, samt skarvar som kopplar ihop dem. Anpassningen till dessa styrs av den projektspecifika budget som är satt. Dessa tenderar att vara orienterade efter lönsamhet snarare än hållbar arkitektur, och därmed blir den exteriöra utformningen ibland bortprioriterad. För att skapa volymhus av hög kvalitet som ger mervärde till sin omgivning, krävs en kollektiv förändring i branschen. Beställare och kommuner är nyckelaktörer och de som främst kan göra skillnad. Konsekvenser: De största utvecklingsmöjligheterna som kan ge förändring för framtiden är; konkurrens på marknaden genom ambitiösa beställare, fokus på process- och produktutveckling, högre kommunala krav samt nya tekniska lösningar som möjliggör för bättre lösningar till lägre pris. Begränsningar: Resultatet är avgränsat till exteriör utformning i volymhusbranschen, med avseende på flerbostadshus på den svenska marknaden. Studien är en övergripande analys och går inte ner på djupet för specifika problem, utan är snarare en vägledning till var problemområden finns.