Visions for a mobile and urban future

Mobility creates perspectives. Today it is a matter of course; our world is unimaginable without it. At the same time, mobility confronts borders that call for new solutions built from the ground up.

It is difficult to imagine our global society without the automobile as an individual mode of transportation. The demand for mobility and individual transport is increasing unabated, above all in developing nations where cities and new markets are booming and large growth potential stands out.

At the same time, the worldwide population explosion, climate change, and the threatening scarcity of resources reveal our planet’s limitations. The open questions and potential problems of our future increasingly impose themselves on us. Automobility as we know it today confronts these systemic boundaries.

How can these topics be made accessible to a wider public? How can interactive media be used to convey these complex connections in simple and effective ways, and how can visitors to the Autostadt in Wolfsburg be prompted to active reflection?

As an interactive research platform in the Autostadt, MobiGlobe presents themes of mobility and makes these understandable within the larger context of sustainability and resilience.

In conceptual conjunction with other installations in the Autostadt including the sustainability exhibition Level Green, MobiGlobe lays the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the phenomena and questions surrounding global mobility.

While it illustrates problems, MobiGlobe also shows practical solutions. It makes clear that the future is malleable. In films, forward-thinking visionaries pose questions regarding the themes of transport, lifestyle, resources, and city development and explain how their concepts and projects can contribute to a solution.

Visitors thus recognize that mobility can only be shaped through a holistic and systematic approach. They are inspired to question their own behaviors and to develop their own ideas.

As the communication platform of the Volkswagen Group, the Autostadt in Wolfsburg has presented material regarding the topic of sustainable mobility for over twelve years. Since 2006, MobiGlobe has critically scrutinized and made possible a dialogue surrounding issues of mobility and our urban future.

Similar to an encyclopedia, MobiGlobe functions as a visual databank. It offers guests access to these themes in various locations and media formats throughout the Autostadt: as a playful, gesture-controlled installation at the Freiraum, the entrance to the Autostadt event spaces, as information stations in the KundenCenter, or as interactive reference materials in the KonzernForum. The interviews with visionary thinkers can also be experienced in different formats. A 20-minute-long film installation projected onto six screens presents a condensed and easily understandable overview of their ideas and projects. These interviews are also shown in a more contemplative setting in the KundenCenter. Here the films can be viewed on iPads, which are integrated into specially designed chairs.

The use of the starry sky as a recurring graphic theme throughout the various exhibits stands for the multitude of ideas, insights, and proposed solutions worldwide. Yet, sustainable mobility is not composed of a single solution. For example, electric cars still cause traffic jams. They still require clean electricity and must become more widely accepted as a mode of transportation. Solutions are only possible within the interplay of technology, city structure, access to resources, and individual lifestyle. We need a systemic understanding of mobility and coherent, globally-considered strategies. Such an approach is thus visualized not only as individual stars but rather through constellations.

MobiGlobe is a fund of knowledge and proposed solutions. Due to their varying formats, these can consistently be experienced anew or in conjunction with other installations in the Autostadt. Thanks to mobile stations, MobiGlobe will also be accessible worldwide at exhibitions and trade fairs.

Awards