The creative designer Jean-Marie Massaud and Toyota European Design & Development (ED2) presented the new TOYOTA ME.WE, a visionary concept for a lighter and environmental car. The TOYOTA ME.WE car is a paradigm shift in automotive thinking using non-standard techniques.
The vision of Jean-Marie Massaud is that of a car user with a keen eye for personal travel. He said: “By losing sight of reality and as a result of an idealised approach, the car has become an accumulation of constraints more than a source of freedom. However, our lives and needs require more adaptability, simplicity and lightness. The car of today should be seen as a personal mobility solution that can deliver more”.
The concept car is the result of three primary aims:
Pertinence. The quest is to deliver an absorbing sensory experience that is adaptable to a wide variety of lifestyles, alongside the essential need for high quality and innovation.
Synthesis. Reduction and consolidation – an approach based on a genuine shift away from auto industry tradition, to remove excess and suggest a new way of responding to how we behave and the expectations we have, and a proposal for an alternative synthesis based on personal choice in the fields of vehicle architecture, cost reduction and user behaviour.
Modernity. A car that is not satisfied simply with looking good, but goes further through the experience it offers, the intelligence of its solutions and its desire to exceed our needs. Ultimately, a car that reflects the values of forward-thinking individuals, rather than simply reflecting their social status.
The project is characterised by the highly renewable of its components. ME.WE’s ease of everyday care - all it needs is a wash - takes its inspiration from the world of boating, as does the interior, the front and rear decks and the roof.
Because it is created from materials that reduce the amount of energy consumed by its use - and therefore CO2 and pollutant gas emissions - and because the natural materials it uses are readily available, the TOYOTA ME.WE delivers an intelligent response to the ecological threats posed by mass production and the growth of the global car fleet.
About Jean-Marie Massaud
A 1990 graduate of Paris’ ENSCI-Les Ateliers (Paris Design Institute), Jean-Marie Massaud has become a protean creator who is internationally recognised for his work in the fields of design and architecture.
Jean-Marie Massaud’s generous and streamlined designs are well-known and highly esteemed for their elegant proportions. But beyond questions of form, his quest for lightness – in matters of essence –, is based on a creative synthesis of economy of means, object utility, and accuracy in the response to the context. His creative practice, expressed at the crossroads of anthropology, engineering, and poetry, is faithfully illustrated in his achievements. “I’m trying to find an honest, generous path [...] with the idea that, somewhere between the hard economic data, there are users, people".
Free from scales and domains, Jean-Marie Massaud presents innovative and progressive solutions that refresh lifestyles and systemic solutions responding to contemporary challenges. In his mind, a project today must synthesise three broader stakes: individual and collective fulfilment and expression; economic and industrial concerns; and environmental matters. His creations, whether speculative or pragmatic, explore this now imperative paradigm: reconciling pleasure with responsibility, the individual with the collective.
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