PiiP

MANIERA presents a remarkable exhibition by the Belgian artist, Harald Thys, who has taken a romantic and utopian idea as the basis to design a car: the PiiP.

Harald Thys, who is mainly known from his work with the artist duo, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, has dreamed of designing a car from an early age. Today he is developing the PiiP, a simple electric car designed to provide a means of transport for the people, without too many frills, and far removed from the marketing-driven spirit of the (expensive) car business. The car has an almost naive and ‘sweet’ look, setting out from an emotional-artistic concept and producing a result as absurd as it is serious. The design, like the artist’s entire oeuvre, is characterised by a burlesque cheerfulness and an almost childlike simplicity, with humorous effects. Yet it also embodies an element of paradoxical emotions and critical reflections. ​ ​​ ​The PiiP is a perfect fit for MANIERA, a design company and gallery that invites architects and artists to develop functional objects – from small utensils to furniture, and now, from a bar to a car. The gallery offers a platform for transverse designs – colouring outside the lines of the designers’ regular work and outside the lines of design itself.

Harald Thys is developing the car with the help of Belgian car designer and mobility expert, Lowie Vermeersch. Vermeersch has been working in the automotive sector for years, first at the Pininfarina studios in Turin, and since 2011, at the head of his own established design agency Granstudio, which designs cars and mobility systems. Vermeersch quickly became fascinated by Thys’s PiiP. Because the artist is so far removed from the ‘automotive world’ in his daily practice, he approaches car design from an unbiased, non-marketing point of view. Lowie Vermeersch describes Harald Thys’s design as “a modestly sweet design, far from all the evil and malicious car designs of the last decade”.

MANIERA is hosting the launch of the PiiP from 8 September. The gallery will be transformed into a car showroom for the occasion, and in addition to sketches and a presentation leaflet, the PiiP will be presented through the use of 3D-printed models and an accompanying virtual-reality experience.