BMW Interpretive Quad

For the past 50 years, the BMW Group has "given artists the opportunity to express their fascination with cars via the BMW Art Cars, combining art and design, technology and innovation, racing and engineering"¹. This project encouraged us to combine an artist's style with our own and apply it to a Miami Quad.

It was important for us to understand the history of the projects we were inspired by before diving into designing our own Quad interpretation. I chose to emulate the design and style of Chinese artist Cao Fei, who completed the 2017 BMW Art Car. What stuck out to me about her design was the multi-media use of augmented reality to invite art into the modern conversation surrounding the boundaries of human creativity and what part technology and AI play in the design process today.

Here, we can see examples of Cao Fei's final BMW Art Car and how she used technology to add a new layer of interpretation to the showcase. This decision allowed viewers to interact with the art and interpret the car like no other BMW submission previously created.

The Miami Quad that I chose to apply this style to was the Far North Quad, containing Flower Hall, Hayne Hall, and Martin Dining Hall. I chose this Quad because the walkways reminded me of the virtual ribbons that Fei used to show the movement of the technological industry.

Below, the original Quad layout is shown as well as my own interpretation inspired by the work of Cao Fei. I chose to design the Quad with a stark black and white figure ground with loose colored pencil collaged and arranged in the negative space. I chose to design the layout in such a way that the contrasting color remains a metaphor for how multimedia art is changing in the modern world.

After creating this 2D Quad design, the next step of this project was to apply the design onto a second, 3D paper airplane surface.

Below, you can see how the design I created harkens back to both Cao Fei's original BMW Art Car and my own Quad interpretation.

A big reason for why I chose Cao Fei is because I enjoyed the way she transformed the idea of multimedia art. Usually, the media is all physical, but by bringing technology into the design and message of the car she expanded the possibilities infinitely. As you can see throughout my portfolio, I tend to favor a wide range of materials and don't really have a specialty media with which I express myself. My inspiration determines to some extent the media I use to portray my ideas, and I was able to relate to Cao Fei in this matter. Her exploration of the modern age through modern technology was an interesting evolution from using traditional supplies to depict new ideas. By using her work as an inspiration, I was able to continue expanding my artistic range and push the boundaries of how I contextualize materials and their message. Studying her process also encouraged me to think more critically about how technology influences the way we perceive art and culture today. It made me realize that innovation doesn’t just lie in new tools, but in how we merge creativity with the changing world around us.

Nov 13, 2025

Page updated

Report abuse