Designing for flexible vehicle interiors through discrete architectural methods: Reframing the role of the designer in an automated and computational age

This Practice as Research (PaR) PhD investigates how automated design and construction methods developed within architectural academia can be adapted to the context of automotive interiors to address flexibility and utilisation challenges associated with Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric (CASE) mobility. The aim of the project was to formulate a novel prototype design practice capable of enabling more adaptable, reconfigurable vehicle interiors - interiors better suited to the dynamic demands of shared and service-based mobility models.

The research engages deeply with the critical limitations of current automotive design practice, arguing that its entanglement with legacy production models undermines its ability to address pressing sustainability, flexibility, and utilisation challenges associated with CASE. The research introduces ‘Discrete Automobility’, a design methodology that translates discrete construction logics - typically used to enable mass customisation, localised production, and component reusability in architecture - into the automotive domain. Through physical prototyping and computational workflows, it demonstrates how these logics can support new forms of vehicle interior design that respond to evolving user needs, while reducing material waste and increasing utilisation rates.

This research questions the role of the designer as we enter a new epoch defined by automation and mass computation. Drawing on Mario Carpo’s Second Digital Turn, the thesis argues that creativity in the computational age shifts from the direct manipulation of form to the indirect authorship of systems, rules, and workflows.

The ‘Education Brick’ prototype serves as a working demonstration of how vehicle interiors can be designed using modular, rule-based construction, allowing layouts to be reconfigured according to context, user group, or time of day. The proposed methodology leverages automated design-to-construction workflows and robotically fabricated modular components to produce interiors that are not fixed, but reconfigurable in response to varied user needs. In this model, the designer becomes a systems architect - crafting rule sets, spatial grammars, and manufacturing frameworks rather than singular forms. The ‘Education Brick’ prototype and ‘Discrete Automobility’ concept has been presented to OEM design teams and their responses, along with critical reflection on the research process, form part of the evaluation and point to future pathways for development.

By situating itself within both design theory and technical practice, this research contributes a new methodology for flexible vehicle interiors and a critical perspective on the future of design authorship. The thesis makes an epistemological contribution by articulating a mode of automotive design that is indirect, and concludes that far from being undermined by automation, designers are uniquely placed to shape the systems and platforms through which design operates; becoming relevant by embracing a more indirect, systemic, and adaptive mode of practice. This thesis argues that indirectness is not a diminishment of creativity, but a reconceptualisation of it, aligned with broader cultural shifts in computation, automation, and shared authorship. By building, testing, and communicating ‘Discrete Automobility’ the research embodies its knowledge claim and invites a critical rethinking of design practice in the automotive field and beyond.