2023: Accelerating Ahead
It is with great pleasure to write that 2023 was another amazing year for the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy. Now in our fourth full year of operation, it is so pleasing to know that we continued to grow and expand our work across all of our Programs this year while also adding new Associates to the team. Our key achievements this year included the re-emergence of a strong internship program, the appointment of three new Associates to the Academy team, publication and printing of our 2022 Photobook, the completion of a number of major new projects for BMW Group and idealworks, winning an Award of Merit in the prestigious DIA Designers Australia Award, and other external collaborations that kept the team very busy throughout the year. Overall, we couldn’t be more excited with how the year transpired!
As always, we are incredibly thankful for the continued support from BMW Group and idealworks and all of the amazing colleagues who have helped this year. We also say thanks to the entire team at the Academy, including our talented Design Associate Jordan Domjahn, incredible Junior Design Associates Tim Lim and Epi Pereira, and our Technical Associate Mike Lepre (who completed his contract in 2023). We appreciate the work of our newest team member, Communications Associate Taharah Ali, and our two other Design Associates who joined for small stints this year, including Daniel Fisher and Jacob Ho. Without your incredible skill and efforts we just would not be able to achieve such outstanding outcomes.
Our cornerstone initiative, the Internship Program, continued to be incredibly strong. At the Academy we accepted 18 students, including 11 through the Academy internships, 2 through Impact Lab, and 5 through FEATURECapstone projects. This was consistent with our overall 2022 cohort intake with a difference in the balance; a decrease in the Impact Lab numbers, and an increase in the Capstone project numbers. For the first time this year, we had the incredible opportunity to collaborate on a special (and secretive) BMW MINI futurevision car project involving Games Design students, and so we accepted 4 students the entire year to work on this as part of their Capstone project. For the other internships, students worked with BMW Group, idealworks, BMW Motorrad and MINI - and the level and quality of the projects were superb once again. The projects ranged from future automotive car concepts, interactive advertising concepts, robotic packaging ideas, graphic design, games concepts and AR wearable tech ideas, to name a few. A number of the intern projects are now being considered by BMW Group and we look forward to updating you on this if any move ahead. Make sure you check out our website Blog page, which captures the details of these great projects from the perspectives of our students including what they learned, how they managed the projects, insights into their experiences, and the incredible outcomes they achieved.
We were so pleased to wrap up our 2023 BMW Group Internship Program, having sent a large cohort of designers to Germany and the UK. One of our most exciting updates is that David Quick, one of our BMW Group Interns, has been given a full-time position at BMW Group. Congratulations to David and we will provide more details on this amazing outcome in the coming months.
Our Research Program this year continued to expand with two new PhD projects. These projects included exploring the Future Autonomous Supercar and another project focusing on the Tacit Knowledge of Designers in Multinational Corporations. These two projects take our research direction into new areas that will expand our research capabilities into human-machine interfaces for vehicles as well as design thinking research. We are already excited about these projects and the new research projects we are launching in 2024.
Once again, in the last 12 months, the Special Projects Program has been our most impressive to date. As usual, we can only discuss a number of projects as most are commercially sensitive, but we can outline some projects that were important ones for the team and kept all of our designers busy. Firstly, several projects we’ve worked on revolve around the ongoing SORDI.ai involving high-end visualisation for various aspects including advanced AI Pointcloud Pipeline, Green Physics AI Metadata, and the ongoing SORDI asset development. These range of projects continue to expand the incredible work conducted by the BMW Group and idealworks with advanced object detection and recognition, digital twin technology, and artificial intelligence. Another major project we worked on was the Future Vision for Hams Hall initiative. For this, we are creating a high-end visualisation that captures the advanced systems that will power the Hans Hall factory for 2030 and beyond, detailing their production strategies, digitisation and sustainability efforts, plus integration of emerging and collaborative technologies. These projects are the engine that drives the Academy, and we are always so fortunate to be working with BMW Group and idealworks on these initiatives and can’t wait to announce a raft of new projects in the coming months for 2024.
Further to our three Program pillars, there have been other achievements we are very proud of throughout 2023, including the launch of the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy 2022 Photobook. These publications catalogue the year in awesome photography and imagery, and if you haven’t already done so, make sure you download it (and check out our previous Photobooks - all free to download)! We also organised a host of internal and external events as part of our external engagement this year. Some of the activities included running a design session as part of the QUT Future You Summit, hosting the launch of the Young iGABA (Innovative German-Australian Business Alliance) program, and hosting a number of high-profile international guests from MIT and other prestigious universities. It was also really exciting to have won a prestigious Award of Merit in the Interact Category for Digitalisation for Sustainability as part of the Design Institute of Australia Designers Australia Awards 2023.
We look forward to 2024 with excitement and confidence. We will announce exciting new projects, collaborations and initiatives as our partnership with BMW Group and idealworks continues to grow. The team and I are immensely proud of our achievements to date and really look forward to 2024 with positivity!
As always, we are so thankful to all the student interns, collaborators and supporters throughout the year who have made this possible. A partnership of this depth and breadth is not possible without significant support from many people across QUT and BMW Group. I also want to personally thank the growing Academy team, who are central to the ongoing success. Finally, thank you to our amazing partners and colleagues across BMW Group in Germany and around the world, especially to our friends Jimmy Nassif, Marc Kamradt and Dylan Sheppard for their continued and unwavering support.
Rafael Gomez
Founder and Head of BMW Group + QUT Design Academy