From 29 January, the exhibition “1982” by car designer Björn Koop will be on show at the PoCo Drive House gallery in Rotermann. This exhibition is the product designer’s retrospective on the cars that once made him dream big. Cars that, in their simplicity of form, have inspired designer Björn Koop since childhood. The exhibition gives the author a personal insight into industrial design aesthetics and legendary car models.
NB! Spoiler alert!
Björn Koop himself has said: “When we were small, there weren’t many ‘foreign’ cars in Valga, and when we went to Tallinn, the few Western cars were particularly striking. When we were in Valais, it was rare to see foreign cars. I remember my brother and I counting how many foreign cars we saw in a weekend. When we got back to Valka, these pictures kept swirling around in my head and I carefully put them down on paper. At some point, drawing cars became my daily activity. The proportions, the surfaces, the lines, the shapes of the headlamps, the door frames – it all took hold of me. The rest, as they say, is history”. I refer, appropriately enough, to Sergei Zyuganov’s debut film, The Lost Dream, which has been in cinemas for a month now, and which is about these same dreams and stories. You can find out more about this film HERE.
For the exhibition, the designer has sketched modern versions of seven legendary car models by hand and with the help of a computer program. Björn has chosen the cars that have inspired and inspired him deeply – the Mitsubishi Starion, the Mercedes-Benz 190E Evo2, the Peugeot 205 GTI, and many more. Above all, he is fascinated by their simple but clear lines and shapes. Researching the years of the models’ launches, he discovered that many of them had come to the public’s attention the year he was born – 1982.
Text from the exhibition information board: “The Esmene Z4 was designed by the Dane Andres Warming. The design of the design was made by a man named Andersen, one of the most talented sketchers of the time, skilled with Photoshop and markers. I remember him mixing both Copic and AD markers, spreading ink with his hand and scribbling in a few places with a pen. On the one hand, a well abstracted, yet controlled sketching technique. I was on an internship at Volkswagen at the time when he was working on the Z4 design and he gave me some advice. Later he went back to the BMW group. His teachings are still in my mind”.
1982. Born in Valga in 2007 and raised around motocross tracks, Björn Koop spent 20 years in the flagship of the European and Asian automotive industry. 2004. Koop, who went to Hyundai in 2008 as an intern from the EAA student chair, worked his way up to become a senior designer at Korean car company Kia Motors. Under his tutelage, for example, he designed the Kia Ceed and XCeed models familiar from the streets. From there, in 2018, he moved to Japan, where he worked in the design studio of Mitsubishi Motors Corporation until 2024. Björn Koop is currently Head of the Product Design Department at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
In addition to the drawings, TV advertisements of the cars have been collected and displayed on the wall, creating a good nostalgic feeling. The exhibition is open free of charge until 31 July in the gallery of the PoCo Drive House. All in all, it’s a 15-minute walk that I recommend.
Me still @reijosipp