Materials "Designers Do More Today Than Just Design Surfaces"

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Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA)

Marilia Biill is responsible for colors, materials, and surfaces at Kia in Korea. Fabric samples or decorations are just one part—her team works with researchers, biologists, and universities on entirely new materials.

Marilia Biill heads the CMF department at Kia in Korea, which deals with colors, materials, and surfaces. Her designers experiment with mushroom cultures and kombucha or study microstructures of insect wings. The goal: to learn from nature and use biological processes to fundamentally transform the vehicle interior.

Ms. Biill, is the role of automotive designers changing?

Yes, definitely. In the past, design and research were often separate worlds. Designers focused more on shapes, colors, or surfaces. Today, they collaborate with chemists, material researchers, or biologists. When we talk about bionics, it is no longer enough to simply be inspired by nature. Designers must understand how biological processes work and how new materials or surfaces can be developed from them.

So do you employ biologists and chemists instead of designers?

No, but our teams work with microorganisms, plant fibers, or bacteria-repellent structures to develop new materials. This completely changes the mindset. Today, designers have to work much more interdisciplinarily than before. However, this also makes their work more exciting. Many feel that they are no longer just designing surfaces but are actually contributing to new solutions.

Is that why you regularly send employees to research at universities?

We have been working very closely for several years with universities such as the Rhode Island School of Design in the USA or the Royal College of Art in London. There, designers can try things that are often hardly possible in everyday development processes. They collaborate with professors and researchers, use laboratories, and experiment themselves with biological materials or natural pigments.

A colleague, for example, worked with mycelium, the root structures of fungi. Others cultivated kombucha materials or studied microstructures of insect wings. It is particularly important to me that the designers truly experiment themselves. They should not only observe but also work practically with the materials.

That sounds like a real challenge.

Of course, everyone is quite nervous at the beginning. Colleagues don't know whether their ideas will work. But that's exactly part of the process. Trying things out, failing, starting anew, and learning from it. When they return, they are incredibly proud of what they have created. Some colleagues present their prototypes almost like small works of art. This always moves me deeply because I see how much they identify with these projects.

Does this collaboration with universities yield practical results?

Many concrete ideas for future materials or surfaces emerge from the work. But perhaps even more important is the new mindset that the designers bring back. Suddenly, they no longer see materials as just finished products but understand the entire process behind them. However, the universities also benefit from this exchange. The students there gain a more direct connection to the industry and see which requirements will later become important in reality.

I believe this connection will become even more important in the future. And, of course, it helps us with recruiting. Many young designers today are no longer only interested in classic form design. They want to work on sustainable solutions and understand how materials are created. This combination of design, research, and sustainability makes the profession significantly more interesting for many than it was in the past.

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