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Volvo, The Local Project.

Degree Project 2022

The Local Project proposes a vision for a lifestyle balanced between urban and rural life. Until the pandemic, people were generally tied to the city for jobs and education. The movement of urbanization and moving in to the city brought many downsides to society, heavily impacting peoples mental health. Connecting people back with nature has a profound effect on mental health and increases well-being both momentarily as well as long term. As the pandemic hit, it brought a new set of opportunities along with it, as the option to work remotely. Thanks to that people are no longer bound to a place the same way they used to be.

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This project aims to inspire people to go out and explore smaller communities just outside their doorstep, and serve as an incentive to escape the city for something different and feed the curiosity and eagerness to explore something real of gen alpha in 2040. It seeks to propose a answer to a future lifestyle where we can roam more freely and be more in control of where we spend our time.

The approach has been to create an entry point for the user to try living rurally. Today there is no other option than to go all in and acquire a private property which then requires tending to at all times. You also have no real clue what you are buying into before the commitments has already been made. There is also a big struggle of finding these spots as they can be tricky to find, especially if you’re not from that rural region to begin with.

With all these unknown factors and a big variety in quality playing a part in the exploration of the countryside, a standard of expectations needed to be met. Therefore, this project explores a light edition camper van on a compact footprint combined with a shared cabin network with a dynamic set of locations the user can explore and know that they get the quality of life wherever the journey might take them.

The mindset has been to create a room on wheels with the very things which used to tie them to the city in the first place, home and work, which turned into and office space and a bedroom inside the vehicle embodying the Volvo mission of freedom to move.

With this approach the users needs for exploration and curiosity are catered to at the very same time as the safe feeling of home.

Collaborating with Volvo cars, safety is always an important topic which lies in the foundation of the concept. In this project safety has been approached as a means to extend the home sphere to make sure the user will feel at home at any destination they go to.