After an absence of some years, designers are rediscovering elegance and simpler surfaces.
Elegant coupes with classical proportions and beautiful surfacing seemed to be a new direction for many premium brands this year. Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac and even Opel were all rediscovering this classic design recipe for recent concepts shown at Frankfurt show.
In stark contrast, the Japanese premium brands continue to explore ever-more baroque and aggressive design directions, with highly complex surfacing on their latest concepts, such as the Nissan Friend-ME, Infiniti Q30 or the Lexus LX-NF — the latter seen as unnecessarily brutal and immature by many designers we spoke to.
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