What automotive design can teach us about cities

Architecture Hunter doesn’t usually talk about cars.

But perhaps that says more about how we still tend to separate disciplines than about the disciplines themselves.

Because after spending a few days inside the world of automotive design, one thing became increasingly clear: design problems are often the same, regardless of scale.

The object changes. The context changes. The constraints certainly change. But the core questions remain surprisingly familiar. How do we make complex systems feel intuitive? How do we reduce friction? How do we design technology that supports people without constantly demanding their attention?

These were some of the reflections that emerged during Volvo’s recent press trip to Barcelona, where Architecture Hunter was invited to experience the launch of the new EX60, offering us a chance to step into a field we don’t often cover directly: electric mobility and automotive design.

And yet, much of what we encountered felt deeply familiar.

In conversations with Volvo’s design team, particularly Sara Erichsen Susnjar, Senior Color and

Material Design Manager, what stood out was how little the discussion was actually about “cars” in the conventional sense.

It was about behavior. Materiality. Emotion. Interfaces. Spatial atmosphere.

And increasingly, invisible technology.

When asked about architectural references, Sarah mentioned projects like Oslo’s Opera House and Walt Disney Concert Hall, reminders that inspiration today rarely respects disciplinary borders.

The newly launched EX60 itself reflects that shift. Rather than framing innovation through spectacle, much of its proposition is centered around making technology feel more natural, from conversational AI integration to systems designed to quietly support the driver in the background.

That is perhaps one of the most interesting realities of contemporary design: the most relevant ideas no longer emerge in silos.

The architect looks at product design. Product designers look at fashion. Automotive teams study architecture. Urban planners think about behavioral psychology. Material innovation flows between industries.

Even products themselves are changing in nature.

Increasingly, they are no longer static objects delivered in a finished state, but evolving systems. The EX60, for instance, is designed around a software-first architecture that improves over time through remote updates, a logic that feels increasingly familiar in conversations around smart buildings and adaptive environments.

And maybe that makes sense, because the challenges we are designing for are increasingly shared.

Mobility is one of them.

Electric vehicles are no longer a speculative future. They are becoming part of a larger urban transition.

But this shift is not simply about replacing combustion engines with batteries.

It is about rethinking the relationship between movement, infrastructure and urban life.

Transportation has always shaped urban form.

Highways redefined cities in the twentieth century. Parking influenced building typologies. Fuel infrastructure dictated patterns of convenience, expansion and land use.

So what happens when mobility becomes quieter, cleaner, more digitally integrated and increasingly intelligent?

If twentieth-century cities were shaped by roads, fuel infrastructure and parking logic, the next chapter may be influenced by vehicles that behave less like purely mechanical objects and more like responsive digital environments.

Cities like Paris, London and Oslo have already begun testing what this future looks like through low-emission zones, electrification incentives and infrastructure investments that rethink the role of mobility in everyday urban life.

The bigger question is not whether electric mobility is growing.

It is what kind of cities this transition is helping create.

How does this affect architecture? Streets? Public space? Even our emotional relationship with movement?

For us, perhaps the most interesting part of stepping into this universe was exactly that realization: this was not really a story about cars.

It was a story about how mobility is being redesigned.

And how, increasingly, the tools shaping our cities may come from conversations happening far outside architecture itself.

_article written by Amanda Ferber
_images: Architecture Hunter
_images courtesy of Volvo