Virgin Hyperloop’s latest interior concept sets out a more humane vision for mass transit, one that doesn’t rely on the screen.
There are two current prevailing narratives around the future of mobility (we’ll set aside the regulatory nightmare of personal drone travel for now). One focuses on the use of autonomous vehicles (AV) for individuals and small groups. We’ve covered plenty of AV concepts over the years, noting the tendency in that space to envision the car interior as a screen-encrusted media cave; if you want a deep dive on this, get a copy of Frame 126. It's also evident in this year’s CES announcements. The other focuses on new potentialities for mass transportation, led by the Hyperloop project being developed by Virgin, who has just released its vision for what its ‘passenger experience’ could look like. Notably, technology takes a back seat.
‘Designing a new mode of transportation from scratch is both an opportunity and a responsibility,’ says Sara Luchian, Virgin Hyperloop’s Director of Passenger Experience. ‘Hyperloop technology – and what it enables – is paradigm-shifting. It follows that the passenger experience should be nothing short of extraordinary.’ The company partnered with design and innovation company Teague for the interior of its forthcoming transport capsules and station infrastructure. The team made a conscious effort to avoid the unintentional dystopianism – all screens, bright lights and high-contrast colours – that often afflicts future transport concepts. Instead, they wanted to develop an aesthetic treatment that foregrounds optimism.
‘We leveraged decades of experience designing how people and things move across various modalities – taking some of the best aspects from aviation, rail, automotive, and even hospitality to create a new and better passenger experience that is distinct to Virgin Hyperloop,’ explains Teague CEO John Barratt. ‘Recessed seat wells provide a greater sense of space, while the raised aisle is a touch of the unexpected and unique. Bands of greenery and wood textures subvert the aesthetic of typical mass transit materials with something optimistic and fresh. All lighting in the pod – including the unassuming information displays – is dynamic and adjusts based on traveller activity and journey milestones.’
Those ‘unassuming’ displays are worth mentioning, embedded as they are behind a biophilic wood veneer that renders them invisible when not in use. It’s certainly a departure from the BMW-designed interior concept from 2018, that's imposing neon-lit cabin seemed to lean on the worst of spacecraft fan fiction rather than the best of transport design. The new variant is all about humanizing the experience of travelling at bullet speed, an effort that’s extended to crafting the sonic environment as carefully as the physical.
‘Through proprietary research and a design thinking approach to creating sound and sonic solutions for Virgin Hyperloop, we were able to address a myriad of potential challenges for this new mode of transportation, from how to evoke a sense of privacy and space to an enhanced sense of safety and calm,’ says Joel Beckerman, founder and lead composer at Man Made Music, who collaborated on the project. ‘We respond to sound quicker than any other sense, so sound actually drives the multisensory experiences. The sonic cues of the Virgin Hyperloop identity system serves as a guide for passengers throughout their experience while instilling confidence, safety, and clarity – you “feel" it rather than “hear”.’
