• BusinessWeek
• Business Exchange

Toyota Designs: Intelligent Urban Living

Toyota has announced the winners of a sponsored design competition hosted by London's Royal College of Art. Based on the theme of 'Intelligent Urban Living', the winners include a simple but effective vertical storage system to keep bikes out of reach of thieves and a keyboard display that makes life easier for two-fingered typists.

Inspired by the design of Toyota's innovative iQ city car, which addresses many of the challenges of modern city living with its compact dimensions, the contest generated inspiration that gave a new twist to some familiar household objects and produced innovations to make modern life easier and more environmentally responsible.

Working from the premise of four categories—Living Room, Bedroom, Kitchen and Garage—RCA students and alumni devised new but eminently practical ideas for a great range of everyday items. Three shortlisted designs from each category were presented to a distinguished judging panel that included Lance Scott of Toyota ED2; designers Ron Arad and Sebastien Bergne; Design Week editor Linda Relph Knight; and representatives from Toyota GB Plc, the RCA and marketing agency Brandwidth.

Click here for more BusinessWeek.com Auto Design stories

next slide previous slide