interview: zaha hadid's napoli station and salerno terminal backdrop the launch of polestar 3

INK tells designboom how zaha hadid entered into picture

The Napoli Afragola railway station and the Salerno Maritime Terminal in Italy by Zaha Hadid Architects appear as the landscapes that introduce Polestar 3 and its car design in the recent digital art collaboration between the car company, creative studio INK, and British photographer Benedict Redgrove. Speaking with designboom, INK’s founding director James Ball says that the emphasis on pure, future-facing form in Zaha Hadid’s design is mirrored and shared by that of Polestar, leading the creative studio to place these two in a series of imagery.

‘Outside of their performance values, Polestar sits atop the few automotive brands that can be seen to exist as the very celebration of design itself. That these values align with their vision, make the two brands symbiotic in their relationship to one another, and a joy to ‘belong’ in a visual space with one another – you could easily assume that to make work such as this is simple, but it isn’t,’ James Ball tells designboom. The resulting images encapsulate the legacies of Zaha Hadid’s Napoli Afragola railway station and the Salerno Maritime Terminal all the while welcoming the entrance of Polestar 3 whose electric SUV scheme fits right at home.

images courtesy of INK | photos by Benedict Redgrove

Using location photography, rendering and CGI technologies

Creative studio INK works with British photographer Benedict Redgrove to illustrate the meeting between Polestar 3 and the architectural works of Zaha Hadid. Benedict Redgrove’s clean and pure visual ethos coupled with the absence of distractions piece well with the imagery INK had in mind and the minimalistic Scandinavian design of Polestar 3. The collective aim is to uplift the design of the electric SUV, and through the futuristic and otherworldly digital imagery, where a diaphanous horizon mirrors the crowd-less station and terminal, the intention unfolds.

INK employs a blend of location photography and real-time rendering to capture the substance of Zaha Hadid’s space-age architecture. They later combine the outcome with the digital CGI car at INK’s London studio alongside the use of abstraction and technology to create the final look. During the CGI and post-production process, INK peruses Zaha Hadid’s architecture to stay true to its design. The team admits it has manipulated the Napoli Afragola railway station and the Salerno Maritime Terminal around the car to create the otherworldly feel. Final post-production elements were later added, including blending surreal shadows and reflections with sharp curves.

‘With hundreds of images captures, angles reviewed, lighting assessed, all parties celebrate the iterative nature of image making. Yet architecture can be simplified, a vehicle’s identity can be formed, and described, through a reductive process of removing the unnecessary in the quest to find the purest, simplest representation of each and every element. It’s a kind of optimization,’ James Ball shares with designboom.

Napoli Afragola railway station and Salerno Maritime Terminal in Italy are the two visual influences

Approaches to technologies in introducing polestar 3

The creation of a futuristic Zaha Hadid architecture to launch Polestar 3 comes with a few hiccups. ‘Our productions are technologically challenging and our approaches are phased. Collaboratively we will select our locations, and once chosen we use an array of pipeline technologies to allow seamless integration on set. With Polestar we utilized our purpose-built AR Automotive Previz Tool, which enables real-time visualization of the vehicle and the immediate vicinity from any device. We can place any vehicle in any space to preview how it will look in that actual environment, with lighting and shadows accurate to that of the day,’ James Ball explains to designboom.

In the case of Polestar, INK locks in a number of heights and angles prior to the shoot and to facilitate realism further. ‘We took our digital vehicle asset to set in a real-time 3D space using our Lizard 360 HDRI camera to capture the environment for image-based lighting. In post, we start the journey in the reductive process of simplification, cleanup, and the addition of our vehicle, with artful manipulation of the environment to simplify the reflections and purify the form,’ James Ball concludes in a conversation with designboom. Now that Polestar 3 has been placed in a gossamer-bathed environment, its real production follows next.

Polestar 3 is the third model in the carmaker’s portfolio, which was announced in 2022. The SUV for the electric age, Polestar 3 is dubbed the first SUV designed from the ground up to be pure electric. In keeping with Polestar’s simplistic yet modern design, the Polestar 3 is defined by sculpted surfaces and optimized aerodynamics. With a range of up to 379 mi and power of up to 510 bhp, the brand-new Polestar 3 will be available in early 2024.

INK works with Benedict Redgrove to illustrate the meeting between Polestar 3 and the works of Zaha Hadid