Terra Incognita
x Daniel Rauch

Terra Incognita is a collection of products that proposes to embrace the constant transformation of styles and aesthetic languages while incorporating adaptation and change through its materiality.

The collection is re-thinking industrial clay, a material traditionally used for styling prototype car surfaces. Its goal is to propose transformation as an inherent quality of a product by reshaping its body instead of replacing it.

Terra Incognita aims to speculate on the concept of aesthetic innovation, adaptation and change. While rarely seen industrial craft of automotive car clay modeling aims at seduction, sculpting novel shapes to later motivate a new product purchase, used to substitute one product for another, the collection reverses the clay’s utilization. Instead, the prototyping material’s properties are elevated to serve as the product material. All material scraped off for transformation purposes can be warmed, formed and re added, making the object adaptable to use and style.

While the concept is developed, theoretically explored and produced by Johanna Seelemann, the formal language of the abstract furniture-sized products refers to current concept cars and was evolved and refined in her collaboration with car designer Daniel Rauch.

Design, Concept, Production:
Johanna Seelemann

Forms and Design Development collaboration:
Daniel Rauch

Car Clay Modeler support:
Simon Badstübner, Sabrina Kraus,
Benjamin Werner

Special Thanks to:
Staedtler and Daf Trucks for material
sponsorship, Daniele Misso, Birta Rós
Brynjólfsdóttir, Ianis Dobrev and
Saga Rantanen for great support

Master of Contextual Design, 2019
Design Academy Eindhoven