Whilst Design Director for Technicon Design France, my team and I created this windowless jet project specifically for the NBAA business aviation show where it was displayed on our stand in October 2013.
The ethos of the project was simple, to challenge current thinking, and propose something a little different but not just a fantasy. It had to be credible and relevant, yet provoke discussion.
I challenged the team to break out of conventional thinking with regards to a business jet exterior and interior.
Whilst defining the concept sketches for the exterior myself, I asked the rest of the team to start thinking about interior concepts and what we could do differently.
We quickly settled on the somewhat controversial, yet interesting, idea of removing the windows from the cabin and using existing or very near future technology to display the exterior environment on flexible OLED screens, which cover the walls and ceiling of the cabin, via external cameras.
The user experience is greatly enhanced by directly engaging the passengers with the environment outside, giving an unhindered panoramic view.
IXION was also a winner in the 2014 International Yacht & Aviation Awards in the Exterior design category.
My thanks to the creative team: Nicolas Jousse, Thomas Digiacomi, Anne Lefevre, Guillaume Juif.
https://www.thedesignawards.co.uk/international-yacht-aviation-awards/winners-2014/
The commercial goal of the project was to showcase our core skills in a Business Aviation context. We had a long standing commercial aviation client but due to confidentiality agreements could not communicate the work we undertook for them.
As a direct result we won two interior design and visualisation projects for Embraer Executive jets and IXION went on to be the most succesful marketing tool in the history of our company, internationally.
The film received millions of internet views and numerous press articles and TV and radio interviews.To this day, some six years later, it still generates enquiries.
I am very proud that in the years since releasing the concept, our proposal of using flexible OLED screens has now been adopted and implemented on commercial aircraft. Emirates "virtual windows" being just one example.
