past
Custom 2CV
After the success of the first collaboration between the car manufacturer, the 2CV Méhari Club Cassis (MCC) and the Swiss school Ecal, which which consisted in accessorizing an electric Mehari.
A new collaboration was initiated by Massilia between the MCC and the Master of Industrial Design students of the École nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre (Brussels).
This time, the students' mission was to design accessories for the new version of the legendary 2CV in order to meet the expectations of a new generation of users.
2021 / 2022
Mehari Club Cassis, Massilia, La Cambre / Design Industriel
2CV Mehari Club Cassis, Massillia, La Cambre/ Industrial design, a jump into the electric blue. The blue that overhangs Cassis, an insolent blue all year round, far, far away from the greyness of Brussels. Behind the desire to participate in this project initiated with the Mehari Club and Massilia, there is first and foremost the 2CV itself – its history and the images it still carries today – but also the industrial model underlying this car, a model that we believe is unprecedented: at the Mehari Club, you can buy an electric 2CV, “retrofit” (i.e. put an electric motor in) a thermal 2CV, but also buy a door, a back seat, a door panel, a second steering wheel... elements that may be replaced with two turns of a screw.
Yet, does putting an electric motor in a 2CV make it a car of 2022? This is the question that the Mehari Club and Massillia approached us with. Our students are not car designers and most of them don't even have their driving licence: two excellent reasons to accept the proposal.
We exclusively focused on the interior of the vehicle, asking ourselves how it could be interpreted as a series of plug&play accessories: you could change the steering wheel unit without necessarily changing the rest, add a long bolster for more comfort, or even change everything entirely.
The six students eventually developed a new dashboard, a steering wheel with a screen, sun visors, door panels with storage space, rubber trim, a new one-piece speaker system, new handles, a large seat accessory... all scenarios that invite us to momentarily leave the road.
— www.mehariclub.com
— www.lacambre.be/fr/formations/design-industriel
Massilia Design
Exhibition
This event was an opportunity to present three projects illustrating the different missions of Massilia before its physical installation in 2023 in Marseille and in particular the support to freshly graduates designers and their collaborations with several companies.
26 June / 29 June 2022
La Cambre x MCC Electric 2CV
Design Contest ‘Apéro anisé'
‘Eoliennes' by Alban Magd
Exhibition «Autofiction, a biography of the car object»
6th April / 31st July 2022
ECAL x MCC Electric MEHARI
Our custom Mehari-Eden shown at the international Design biennale of Saint-Etienne : Autofiction, an exhibition-documentary in four parts takes the time to stop and examine one object, the car.
While individual's desire for mobility keeps on growing (the number of cars on earth passed the 1.2 billion mark in 2020), profound aspirations are springing up all over the place to change the way we consume, our relationship with our resources and our political and social standpoints. That being the case, how can we reconcile a deeply rooted culture of mobility with new existential aspirations? How has the car become the object that stands for our desires and our difficulty in taking another path? How are designers taking this situation on board? We are faced with different possible scenarios, different bifurcations. Between the economical vehicle and the autonomous vehicle, between the radical end of the private car and the multiple new forms of collective transport: what to choose? How to weigh the pros and cons? What will the social, political, technical and environmental impacts of each of these choices be? And beyond that: will we have to reform production systems, infrastructures and in fine the car itself? Automotive design is changing. The manufacturers are now taking an interest in global mobility, shaken out of their comfort zone by the Californian and Chinese tech giants, who are proposing new mobility services, and by amateur collectives and citizens who are experimenting, tinkering and participating in developing new imagined scenarios and fictions for mobility. Visitors will discover a composite landscape made up of objects and documentary images, placed in perspective, producing original assemblies that invite the visitor to reflect on the place the car takes up in our lives. Objective: to use the cultural viewpoint of design to try and find the keys to enabling us to bring individual contributions to this major technical and societal controversy embodied by the car.
Curators : Anne Chaniolleau et Olivier Peyricot
12e International Design biennale of Saint-Etienne 2022
Cité du design
Platine Sud
3 rue Javelin Pagnon
42000 Saint-Étienne
“Mobilité” Eden, electric Mehari car
Fev / Juin 2021
‘2CV/Mehari Club Cassis’
+ ECAL School of Design (CH)
In spring 2021, founder of Massilia, Nathalie Dewez, initiated a collaboration between a group of industrial design students at ECAL (Ecole cantonal d’art de Lausanne) and ‘2CV Mehari Club Cassis’, spare part manufacturer and producer of the car, Eden, an electric version of the iconic car from the 1960s, Mehari. A leisure and summer car, with open sides and a body entirely made in plastic, the Mehari makes a perfect vehicle for the seaside.
In this study, Eden was used as a subject for further reflections on the matter, and the students finished with a new-developed series of accessories for a future version of Eden, presented during the design festival ‘Design Parade’ at Villa Noailles, Hyères, in June 2021. ‘2CV Mehari Club Cassis’ is a fitting partner for Massilia for numerous reasons: they’re local, based in the south of France, it’s a family-owned company renowned for their craftsmanship and excellent quality and they too believe in democratic, sustainable design solutions.
Exhibition @Villa Noailles, Hyères - June 21’
