1. Reframing the designer’s role in the computational age

This thesis reimagines the role of the automotive designer in an era increasingly shaped by automation, AI, and computational design. Positioned within the disruptive context of Connected, Autonomous, Shared, and Electric (CASE) mobility and grounded in the architectural discourse of Mario Carpo’s Second Digital Turn, it proposes a shift in automotive design practice: from the manipulation of material form to the orchestration of design parameters within dynamic, data-rich systems. Through a Practice as Research methodology, the thesis introduces Discrete Automobility, a speculative platform-based approach to vehicle interior design inspired by discrete construction techniques from architecture. In this model, the designer becomes a systems architect—crafting rule sets, spatial grammars, and manufacturing frameworks rather than singular forms.

The research engages deeply with the critical limitations of current automotive design practice, arguing that its entanglement with legacy production models and aesthetic branding strategies undermines its ability to address pressing sustainability, flexibility, and utilisation challenges associated with CASE. The proposed methodology instead leverages automated design-to-construction workflows and robotically fabricated modular components to produce interiors that are not fixed, but reconfigurable in response to varied user needs.

The thesis makes an epistemological contribution by articulating a mode of design that is indirect—more about enabling, constraining, and setting conditions than about authorial expression. This indirectness is not a diminishment of creativity, but a reconceptualisation of it, aligned with broader cultural shifts in computation, automation, and shared authorship. By building, testing, and publicly exhibiting the Education Brick and related prototypes, the research embodies its knowledge claim and invites a critical rethinking of design practice in the automotive field and beyond.

2. Sustainability and the CASE imperative

As the climate crisis intensifies and global mobility paradigms shift toward CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric), this thesis argues for a fundamental rethinking of automotive design. Positioned against the backdrop of overproduction, underutilisation, and unsustainable material lifecycles, the research proposes a design-led intervention: Discrete Automobility, a novel circular design and construction methodology that allows interiors to be disassembled, adapted, and reused in a platform-based system.

Developed through a Practice as Research methodology, the work adapts discrete architectural techniques—originally developed for flexible, parametric building systems—to the automotive interior. It critiques the industry’s overreliance on branded form, material luxury, and underutilised volume, showing how current practices fail to meet the utilisation, adaptability, and carbon-reduction demands of future mobility systems. Instead, it prototypes a system that could support lower-volume, high-variance vehicle interiors that respond dynamically to shared use and diverse needs.

The practice component includes the Education Brick and other demonstrators that explore robotic fabrication, modular assembly, and rules-based configuration. These are not speculative gestures but working systems, grounded in computational logic and material pragmatism. Through these artefacts, the thesis offers a new production logic for interiors that aligns with circular economy principles and CASE priorities.
This research contributes new knowledge by showing how design can drive more meaningful sustainability impacts—not through surface materials or offsets, but through radical changes to production logic, use cycles, and the spatial programmes of mobility itself. It positions the designer as a critical agent of systems-level transformation, equipped to lead rather than follow in the move toward decarbonised transport.

3. Practice as Research in a Post-Fordist Design Economy

This thesis explores how Practice as Research (PaR) can generate new knowledge at the intersection of design, architecture, and emerging technology. Taking the automotive interior as a critical site, the research applies discrete design and robotic construction techniques—originally developed in architectural academia—to propose a radical alternative to conventional vehicle design practice. The resulting methodology, termed Discrete Automobility, foregrounds adaptability, parametric variation, and localised construction, in contrast to the fixed forms and centralised production of the post-Fordist car industry.

The thesis positions PaR not as a supplement to theory but as a primary mode of epistemological inquiry. Through prototyping, fabrication, and public dissemination, it demonstrates how material practice can critique and transform disciplinary assumptions—especially around authorship, aesthetics, and the role of the designer in computational systems. Influenced by Mario Carpo’s Second Digital Turn, the work argues for a shift in design agency: from making forms to scripting conditions for emergence.

The research is significant for its methodological hybridity, combining speculative design, computational workflows, and critical theory in a cross-disciplinary praxis. It proposes that designers today must operate more like programmers or strategists—setting up platforms rather than crafting products, enabling systems rather than prescribing outcomes. This is particularly urgent in the context of CASE mobility, where the design of adaptive, sustainable systems is both a creative and ethical imperative.