Hitachi Rail Europe and the Royal College of Art (RCA) this week announced the winners of their latest vehicle design competition, in which students were asked to create new concepts for London’s deep tube and high-speed rail travel.
During a ceremony at the London Transport Museum on Wednesday, 18th May, Hitachi Rail Europe and the RCA awarded the high-speed design award to Team Hive, made up of Andrei Nour, Kaize Zheng, Anna Ekstrom and Rosie Green. The overall deep tube award was handed to Team Revitalise + Empower, made up of Cas Dahmen, Sam Philpott, Kate Webster and Oliver Dixon.
This marks Hitachi Rail Europe and the RCA’s sixth year and third project together, as part of the Vehicle Design Studio Partnership. The Partnership was created to inspire the next generation of designers to think about the challenges rail users face today and in the future, and create solutions to improve the passenger experience.
Karen Boswell, Managing Director of Hitachi Rail Europe, presented the awards and commented: “This is the sixth year Hitachi has collaborated with the RCA to find innovative solutions to challenges in train design, and I am delighted that this year’s students have developed exciting new concepts for London’s Tube as well as high-speed trains. As a business we are continuously looking for new sources of inspiration and innovation to improve fare-paying customer journeys, and collaboration of this kind acts as the starting point for transforming rail travel here in the UK.â€
The RCA is renowned for automotive design and have expanded their area of expertise into public transportation design. Professor Dale Harrow, Head of the RCA Vehicle Design Programme said: “We are fortunate to have had Hitachi Rail Europe partnering with us for our third vehicle design competition around London’s deep tube and high-speed rail travel. Working with a leading train manufacturer means that our students have access to up-to-date technology and expertise in rolling stock design as they develop their own innovative ideas.â€
All of the team winners will now have their work shown at MetroRail at the Business Design Centre in London this week, and later in the year by Hitachi at this year’s InnoTrans exhibition in Berlin. The winning students have won paid research project trips to attend the event in Germany. Two students, Andrei Nour and Cas Dahmen, have also been invited to undertake a bespoke internship at Hitachi’s Design Division Office in Tokyo.
About Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd.
Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd.is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Europe, Ltd. and is headquartered in London, UK.
Hitachi Rail Europe is a total railway system supplier offering rolling stock, traction equipment, signalling, traffic management systems, and maintenance depots.
Hitachi draws on many years of experience as a leading supplier of high-speed trains such as the Shinkansen (bullet train) for the Japanese and international markets. In Europe, Hitachi Rail Europe’s first rolling stock contract was to deliver a fleet of 29 Class 395 trains, the first domestic high-speed train in the UK, which are maintained at Hitachi’s state of the art depot in Ashford, Kent. As part of the British Department for Transport’s Intercity Express Programme, Hitachi Rail Europe will replace the UK’s ageing fleet of Intercity trains, and will establish a new rolling stock manufacturing facility in the UK for this purpose. The trains will be maintained and services in a number of new maintenance depots along the Great Western Main Line and the East Coast Main Line. www.Hitachirail-eu.com
About the Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is the world’s most influential postgraduate university of art and design. Specialising in teaching and research, the RCA offers the degrees of MA, MPhil and PhD across the disciplines of fine art, applied art, design, communications and humanities. There are over 1,100 masters and doctoral students and more than a hundred professionals interacting with them – including scholars, leading art and design practitioners, along with specialists, advisors and distinguished visitors. For more information, please visit www.rca.ac.uk
