MINI e SOS – School of Sustainability launch a new initiative dedicated to young international talents and focused on an area that we too often underestimate: sound. We are talking about MINI Inhabit Sound, a research project that combines the study of sound design with its application in the urban environment from a sustainable point of view. A creative idea that can offer great ideas for the future.
MINI Inhabit Sound, a sound sustainability project
Inside that name there is already a lot of the concept behind this project. “Living the sound”Gives us the idea of how we live surrounded by noises of all kinds. And just as we care about so many other aspects of the environment around us, so too does the sound impact cared for and studied. To be able to manage it possibly in an absolutely sustainable way, especially in cities.
And it’s easy to find the link between this concept and MINI, a car that was born immediately with an urban spirit of full efficiency. A perfect encounter, therefore, that goes equally well with the creative world developed in the context of SOS – School of Sustainability. A reality born in 2015 in Bologna and recently also arrived in Milan with the aim of creating a multidisciplinary group to face environmental challenges in a creative way.
MINI Inhabit Sound is a path that will start in the 2022-23 academic year aiming to create sustainable spaces for listening, contemplation and sharing in different cities around the world. This also through a process of “materialization of sound“, Studying creative solutions to make an almost synaesthetic concreteness of this aspect of our lives in a new way.
The idea for this project is that of MINI itself, which availed itself of the supervision of Renzo Vitale, Sound Creative Director of the BMW Group. He himself explained the importance of an in-depth study in these areas:
“It is necessary to build auditory awareness, so that individual actions lead to collective well-being. This goal can be achieved by relating to cities as sound realities, understanding their weaknesses in order to redesign them acoustically through different levels of expression and complexity “.
A significant introduction to the SOS – School of Sustainability offer
MINI Inhabit Sound it will therefore enrich the proposal of the vocational training school, which for years has been dedicated to training in the field of sustainability in many different aspects. A way for young graduates and professionals to get involved in looking for new ways in the field of design, architecture and design. MINI Inhabit Sound will be in charge of Lorenzo Palmeriteacher of the school, but also an architect and designer active in fields such as design, composition and music production.
Mario Cucinellafounder of the school said:
“We are enthusiastic about this new partnership as MINI, it is in fact thanks to the precious support of our partners that SOS – School of Sustainability can think big, tackling very ambitious and far-reaching research projects. Through this collaboration we will receive support and additional skills and creating a synergy so that we can help our students to broaden their horizons, studying a new theme for us such as acoustics in relation to urban sustainability “.
It is of course a very important step also for MINI, which thus continues its path of raising awareness and attention to issues related to sustainability. And it is interesting to point out that this project does not particularly focus on the car itself. As opposed to other similar partnerships here there is no immediate link between initiative and product.
This is because, quite simply, interest is another. There is a desire to focus on the idea of innovation and sustainable development, which is particularly dear to the brand. Telling and studying the very environment in which the car moves to get to know it from other points of view.
MINI Inhabit Sound is an opportunity to meet
He excellently explains the aforementioned Renzo Vitale who comments on the project as follows:
“The partnership between MINI and Mario Cucinella’s SOS – School of Sustainability represents an extraordinary opportunity to meet and research to propose innovative reflections and confront young talents from all over the world. It is an honor for me to have the opportunity to undertake a path to raise awareness on the theme of sound design and acoustic sustainability in the urban environment “.
A great initiative therefore that focuses on a an area that has never been explored enough. We are already curious to find out what the young people who will take part in the project will invent.