What’s Happening: Mercedes-Benz and BMW are teasing futuristic touchscreens that span the entire width of a dashboard, calling into question whether over-the-top displays are a useful tool or dangerous distraction.

The Download: Touchscreens in vehicles have come a long way since the “add-on” days of rickety GPS systems and portable DVD players. Some 97 percent of new cars sport at least one built-in touchscreen—and they’re quickly expanding in size. S&P Global Mobility estimates almost a quarter of American cars and trucks have command displays spanning 11 inches or more. This is largely thanks to Elon Musk, who unveiled the Tesla Model S in 2009 with a command center featuring a 17-inch LCD touchscreen. Younger startups like Rivian and Lucid followed suit, and now cars have become “rolling supercomputers” that process up to 14 times more code than a Boeing 787.

Touchscreens come with a multitude of benefits: drivers can seamlessly connect their vehicles to mobile devices and automakers save money on manufacturing small switches and toggles while rolling out new features remotely via software updates. But when giant touchscreens start distracting drivers from the road, how much is too much? “The size of screens has tripled from what I thought was huge,” says Gartner Inc. analyst Mike Ramsey. “Some threshold was reached where the car companies said, ‘Distraction be damned, we’ve got to have bigger screens.’”

Futuristic dashboard displays may seem appealing, but come with some drawbacks: distractions, clunky interfaces, unresponsiveness, and old tech running the risk of breaking and thus making important vehicle functions inaccessible. That hasn’t stopped automakers from investing in the touchscreens of tomorrow—especially for upmarket drivers who happen to be more tech-savvy. Mercedes-Benz upped the ante with its “Hyperscreen,” a sculptural slab of double-coated glass straight out of Tron that stretches 56 inches across the dashboard. Its impressive AR-powered navigation generates virtual street signs and address numbers that hover over homes and businesses upon one’s approach.

Perhaps the field’s biggest innovator is BMW, who is no stranger to touchscreens—or backlash from taking in-vehicle tech one step too far. At this year’s CES, the German automaker forwent screens altogether with the i Vision Dee, the chameleonic concept sedan that projects dashboard tools like the speedometer and audio displays onto parts of the windshield. Skeptics fear that Minority Report–style windshield projections will impede visibility, but BMW says the concept can allow drivers to adjust controls without taking their eyes off the road. And when the car isn’t moving, passengers can use the windshield to watch movies, play games, take Zoom meetings, and even enter the metaverse.

In Their Own Words: “None of our consumers would want to cover their living rooms in screens,” Kai Longer, head of design for BMW i, the automaker’s electric division, told the New York Times. “They want their Eames chair or Nelson clock. A touch screen doesn’t speak to our senses. We’re made to touch fabrics and sense different surfaces; that’s what makes us human.”

Surface Says: Did Gary Numan see the future?

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On April 12, Surface will bring Design Dialogues on the road to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) for SCADstyle 2023—a two-day deep dive into emerging innovations across beauty, fashion, tech, and more. Surface editor Jenna Adrian-Diaz will moderate a panel discussion between INC Architecture + Design founding partners Adam Rolston and Drew Stuart and Supernature Labs and Studio Dror founder Dror Benshetrit to discuss the future of architecture and urban planning through the lens of biophilic design and creative leadership.

Dividing space inside a cavernous Manhattan loft while retaining a sense of airiness isn’t the easiest task, but local firm BoND was immediately up for the challenge when Brazilian fashion brand PatBo enlisted them to devise subtle yet calming interiors for its Fifth Avenue flagship. Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchberger, the firm’s co-founders, opted for pale pink scaffolding that doubles as partitions and displays for the label’s colorful womenswear.

“They’re so readily available, so New York in their character, and easy to adapt to different conditions,” Rauchwerger says. “Moreover, they’re inexpensive and have a younger, fresher feel that works so well with the spirit of a PatBo studio.” Further soft touches appear throughout, particularly via curved sofas, pink pleated pendants, and sinuous rugs based on drawings by Brazilian modernist Roberto Burle Marx and designed with Punto e Filo. The crown jewel, however, is the showroom bar, a curved statement piece sporting a pink stone counter.

The act of making is incredibly important to James Russell and Hannah Plumb, the work-and-life partners behind English studio JAMESPLUMB—so much so that they forgo fixed processes in favor of letting materials and their own intuition naturally guide every project. This loose approach affords the duo’s already-versatile Shropshire workshop space to evolve their skills with each new commission, resulting in rigorously crafted objects and interiors where the distinction between art and design is blurred and interchangeable.

The Spanish-Croatian artist has welcomed superstars like Rosalía and Lil Nas X into his pristine yet uncanny universe, which asks discomfiting questions about how technology influences the human psyche. For his debut solo exhibition in Japan, he renders to-scale models of his own head to simulate a “virtual avatar” that provokes an anti-capitalist scenario: What if we weren’t always so alert and connected?

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Filip Custic, 30, Madrid.

Title of work: Cabezza zzz (2023).

Where to see it: PARCO Museum, Tokyo, until April 24.

Three words to describe it: Asleep/awake. Connected/disconnected. Action/reflection.

To celebrate Dior’s landmark pre-fall show and cultural programming in Mumbai, Chanakya ateliers artistic director Karishma Swali took to Great Eastern Home, a collectible design showroom located in Mumbai’s historical Great Eastern Mills. For a candlelit seated dinner, the host turned to the chefs behind Masque, which debuted the country’s first 10-course tasting menu and was named one of the world’s best restaurants of 2023.

Where was it? Great Eastern Home, Mumbai

When was it? March 28

Who was there? Maria Grazia Chiuri, Jeffrey Deitch, Brigitte Lacombe, Brigitte Niedermair, Bandana Tewari, Rekha Singh Mewar, and more.

In the late ‘90s, when Ann Philbin reluctantly agreed to leave her post at The Drawing Center in New York to spearhead the relatively young Hammer Museum, L.A. wasn’t regarded as a hub for world-class cultural institutions. But the enterprising Philbin saw potential in her new city and the little-known museum, which business magnate Armand Hammer launched eight years earlier in an unassuming Westwood Village building owned by his company Occidental Petroleum to show off his prized collection of Impressionist paintings and European artworks.

In the quarter-century since, Philbin has dramatically transformed the Hammer Museum, now owned by UCLA, into a formidable player in the city’s cultural sphere. Beyond acquiring 4,000 pieces of boundary-pushing contemporary art and significantly reorienting its mission, Philbin has tripled the museum’s staff, quadrupled its annual budget, and increased its endowment from $35 million to $125 million. She also recently pulled back the curtain on a $90 million renovation by Michael Maltzan Architecture that sprawled across more than two decades of starts and stops.

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Holly Hunt offers exquisite and highly customizable pieces for residential and commercial properties. Founded in 1983 by Holly Hunt, the Chicago-based brand pioneered a new style of luxury interiors with an elegant, streamlined aesthetic and timeless color palette, drawing both residential and commercial design trade seeking distinctive and custom pieces.

Surface Says: Holly Hunt’s discerning selection streamlines the process of outfitting interiors with modern, designer pieces from ceiling to floor.

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