A mood board of four reference products designed for the project, each made to embody one of the brand's four principles: humble, simple, curious, confident.
ANURA
Degree Project
2026
In rural Scandinavia, where the way of life depends on personal capability and community cooperation, modern vehicles are moving in the opposite direction. They are becoming more connected, more automated, more dependent on authorised service, and less willing to let the driver do what the driver knows how to do. This thesis project asks what a vehicle would look like if, instead of overriding the user, it was built to trust them. ANURA is the answer — a vehicle for rural Scandinavia in 2040, designed around user authority, repairability, and sparking curiosity.
Project Information
This project began in the village I grew up in. A village of eighteen people in Dalarna, with the closest grocery store five kilometres away and no public transport. A place where you learn early that things will go wrong sometimes, and that you and your neighbours are who fixes them. What I grew up around is also where millions of people in rural Scandinavia still live. Communities maintain their own roads. They build their own internet. They are increasingly building their own energy systems. They are capable, confident, humble problem solvers.
But the vehicle, traditionally one of the most personal and adaptable tools in this context, has shifted into something else. Modern vehicles are trying to be smarter, more optimised, more automated. They are becoming so complex that the user is barely the driver anymore, so dependent on authorised service that local mechanics have been replaced by centralised workshops, and so optimised for specific conditions that they often stop working properly outside that. In trying to make our vehicles smarter, we have made them dumber.
Eight semi-structured interviews with rural residents in Sweden confirmed the pattern. Seven of the eight drove a modern car as their daily vehicle, and the same frustrations came up across the conversations: the vehicle overriding the driver, the vehicle requiring connectivity for basic functions, the vehicle requiring authorised access for any repair.
Result
ANURA is a vehicle for rural Scandinavia in 2040, designed around four commitments. The user, not the vehicle, has authority over the tool. The vehicle can be repaired without proprietary lock-in. It is designed to be discovered, with features that work in more than one situation depending on what the user needs from them. And it supports community-scale capability, not just private commuting.
The whole vehicle is built around a single small handle: two mounting holes seventeen centimetres apart, with a third opening that works as a grip, a strap point, or a pulley mount. That spacing became the structural grid of the entire vehicle. The body is held together with visible screws on the same dimensional grid, allowing any panel to be removed with normal tools. The same handle reappears across the vehicle as door handle, blinker, rear light, and tie-down point.
Multi-purpose components run throughout. Two front winches allow recovery from different angles. A detachable rocker panel works as a loading ramp and a traction board. A modular headlight detaches as a portable lantern, or inverts onto the roof as a forward work light. The frunk is transparent, with the toolbox, first-aid kit, fire extinguisher, and towing rope visible underneath. Body panels are made from a single recyclable polymer, pigmented through rather than painted, allowing the vehicle to age with its user rather than against them.
This project is a tribute to the place and the people that shaped me, as a person and as a designer. ANURA is designed for rural Scandinavia, but the conditions it responds to exist in many places. Anywhere people have always handled themselves and are now being given tools that no longer trust them. The vehicle is a proposal for what mobility could look like in those places.
UID26 | Love Björklund – Grad project presentation
Form ideation sketches exploring proportion, stance, and the relationship between volumes. Inspiration taken from the 4 products previously designed.
Front view, with two winches integrated into the bumper and modular headlights that detach for use as portable lanterns.
The rear of the vehicle, where the ANURA logo is debossed into the panel above the rear fender, integrated into the body rather than applied to it.
The handle, with two mounting holes and a third opening that serves as a grip, a strap point, or a pulley mount.
The running board, which detaches from the vehicle to work as a loading ramp or a traction board.
The headlight reversed and mounted on the roof, the same component in a third role — alongside its uses as a headlight and as a portable lantern.
The rear light, built from the same handle component used across the vehicle.
ANURA is built to be adapted to whatever the user needs it for, with capability that responds to the situation rather than dictating it.
The headlight detaches as a portable lantern, and the car keeps lighting the way with its remaining light — the empty mount showing an X, signalling that the vehicle is now blind on one eye.
