[As with John Bradford, I too must give full disclosure. A member of the 1K club, I also now work on the Bloodhound Project and am fully biased to how great the project is.]
The West of England Design Forum have always tried to get a wide and diverse range of designer’s to give talks at the city’s Watershed venue, but it is rare that they manage to get product designers and even more rare that they get one working on such a pioneering project.
Mike Turner, one of the lead designers on the Bloodhound SuperSonic Car Project gave a fascinating and thought provoking presentation on Wednesday night on why it is that he does what it is that he does.
His career, to put it simply, is full of interesting projects. Starting in 1997 with Adtranz designing rail vehicles, he moved his way through the Renfew Group and JCB until he became senior industrial designer working on the JCB Dieselmax World Record Vehicle. Now running his own company (Mike Turner Design Ltd) he came to the Bloodhound through links made with Dieselmax. ‘I got bored, so moved on’ seemed to be a concurrent theme throughout his career.
What was interesting was hearing how much of a balancing act his sort of design really is. Designing the A-Surface bodyshell of the Bloodhound SSC (the surface that interacts with the air) involves continuous liaising between the lead engineer (John Piper) and the chief aerodynamicist (Ron Ayres). Mike works with the CAD software Alias, trying to make the profile of the car as sleek and as ‘slippery’ as possible whilst still accommodating the package that needs to be carried within.
One of the more surprising points that he raised came down to the time that he actually spends on the project. As each new configuration of the car body needs to go through CFD testing, it could be a case of several weeks between design iterations. The results would come back from the analysis, twenty to thirty changes would be listed, Mike would redesign the model and off it would go for another round.
What was clear though from his talk was that this project held its own unique constraints. This is design at its absolute limits. Very few rules are known. What is more though, this is a one off project. This means that there are no manufacturing constraints; each part is bespoke. Neither I nor the organisers of the event had seen so many questions raised by the audience. It is a captivating project; one that inspires and begs you to find out more. Mike Turner only gave a taste of the challenges and complications that building the fastest car on earth holds, but nonetheless it was worth it, just to see where design can take you – to the borders of what is possible.
-Hywel
So the deed is done, the destination is deserted and the design has disappeared. Until next year that is. Closing the doors on the Old Fire Station with over 4,500 visitors at that venue alone, this year’s Bristol Design Festival was by far the biggest, and most certainly the best. As I am sure that a detailed recap of the festival will be published soon, this is just a simple post to say some thank yous.
The BDF Blog 