Iron Futuristic Design · 2025
Bio Shift Multipurpose Vehicle
by Amin Ghashghavi and Reza Ghandchi
- A' Design Award 2025 Iron Winner in Futuristic Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Furizon
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 66,975
- Verification code 8DBA46A8B3 · Verify this award
About Bio Shift Multipurpose Vehicle
Bio Shift is a modular vehicle concept designed for travel on land, in the air and on water. On the ground, Bio Shift moves like an electric car driven by an efficient electric motor. The greenhouse of the cabin is detachable and converts into a drone with four wings or into a surfing pod with two wings. The wings open and the rotors start, which allows vertical take-off and landing. The modular structure is inspired by the bacteriophage life cycle and by lunar mission modules. The aim is to offer safe and flexible exploration.
Amin Qashqavi's Bio Shift Multipurpose Vehicle engages the enduring design challenge of synthesizing terrestrial and aerial mobility paradigms into coherent formal language, positioning itself within the trajectory of speculative transportation design that extends from mid-twentieth-century aerospace optimism through contemporary urban air mobility discourse. The design demonstrates sophisticated command of biomorphic form vocabulary, employing continuous compound curvature and organic contour flow to suggest biological efficiency while maintaining the material precision and surface refinement associated with advanced manufacturing capability. The chromatic strategy exhibits notable restraint, anchoring the composition within a compressed cool-toned palette of silver-whites and blue-grays that communicates technological sophistication and premium material quality, while strategic deployment of warm cognac interior tones and coral-orange stabilizer accents provides necessary visual punctuation and functional legibility. The formal architecture achieves successful integration of passenger enclosure, propulsion suggestion, and aerodynamic optimization within a unified sculptural statement that reads coherently across the three presented iterations at varying scales and orientations, suggesting modular platform thinking or scalable design system application. The surface articulation rewards sustained examination, with flowing character lines and highlight progressions demonstrating careful consideration of how light behavior across complex curvature contributes to perceived quality and technological advancement. The compositional strategy of presenting three vehicle instances within dramatic alpine context serves multiple rhetorical functions, establishing environmental capability through extreme terrain association, providing scale reference through landscape monumentality, and constructing aspirational narrative around freedom of movement through challenging geography. The design appears to explore questions central to emerging mobility paradigms regarding the dissolution of categorical boundaries between automotive and aeronautical typologies, the integration of autonomous or semi-autonomous operation into personal transportation, and the formal expression of advanced propulsion systems that depart from conventional mechanical visibility. The wraparound transparency treatment and interior-exterior visual continuity suggest consideration of experiential dimension, inviting contemplation of how occupant perception transforms when vehicular experience transitions from horizontal road-constrained movement to three-dimensional volumetric navigation. The work demonstrates awareness of contemporary design discourse around biomimicry, material honesty through surface expression, and the symbolic communication of technological capability through formal restraint rather than aggressive mechanical display. One might observe how the design negotiates between recognizable automotive formal references that ground viewer comprehension and speculative aeronautical suggestions that propose capability expansion, creating productive tension between familiar and visionary that characterizes effective concept design communication. The environmental staging within pristine alpine territory perhaps invites reflection on how advanced mobility technologies might facilitate human access to remote or challenging landscapes while raising implicit questions about the relationship between technological capability and environmental responsibility, the democratization or concentration of advanced transportation access, and the cultural meanings we project onto vehicles that promise liberation from conventional spatial constraints. How might the formal language of this multipurpose vehicle reflect broader cultural aspirations regarding individual agency, technological progress as pathway to enhanced human capability, and the persistent dream of flight rendered accessible through integrated design thinking?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This project presents a vehicle concept that combines the flexibility of modular design, and the ability to fly and to surf on water, totally offer a transport system that is beyond the normal means of transport. It has a removable greenhouse that turns into a drone and surfing pod with four 4 and 2 wing. This innovation is motivated by the need to explore while having a critical safety measure whereby the user can fly away from harm and
provide unparalleled freedom of exploration. - Dimensions & Packaging
- This concept vehicle is designed based on modularity, energy efficiency, and artificial intelligence to improve the safety of users and the flexibility of operation to meet the requirements of modern transportation.
- Tags
- transportation design, concept vehicle, dual-purpose vehicle, vehicle, concept car, car
- Production Technology
- This vehicle concept was developed through a systematic design process emphasizing modularity and multifunctionality. We analyzed current technologies, including modular vehicle architectures and drones, to create interchangeable components. Inspired by the bacteriophage lifecycle as a main source, the design allows seamless transitions between transport modes. The techniques were employed enabling the creation of a transport system that adapts to users' evolving safety and performance needs.
- Design Challenge
- The hardest part of this design was overcoming the challenge of integrating multiple functionalities into a single vehicle while ensuring efficiency. The modular design required research on how parts can be divided while maintaining an appealing appearance. To address this challenge, it was necessary to balance familiarity and novelty in overall design language. Although there were concerns about public acceptance, they can be alleviated by highlighting the advantages this vehicle can offer.
- Project Duration
- The project started on June 1, 2024, in Tehran and finished on September 30, 2024, also in Tehran.
- Operation Flow
- The vehicle operates using three primary modes: ground mode, aerial mode, and surfing. On the ground, it works like any other electric vehicle, using an efficient electric motor to drive the car. When the user wants to switch to flying or surfing mode, the greenhouse comes off. The wings are opened, the rotors are started, and make the vertical take-off and landing possible.
- Research
- This design research is the practical use of theoretical concepts. It seeks to investigate and design new vehicle architectures in terms of modularity and flexibility based on biological systems such as the bacteriophage and aerospace systems such as the lunar lander and orbiter. This includes reviewing prior research on modular systems in biology and aerospace engineering, in order to investigate the modularity concept in car design, that is, how components can be best divided and combined.
- Inspiration
- A blend of the bacteriophage involves three different stages: attachment, separation, and reattachment. The lunar mission has specialized modules that work in parallel but are part of a single system. Both of these inspirations help provide the vehicle with the ability to explore and be as safe as possible, all while providing a design that allows users to transcend the limitations of Earth and experience the true essence of freedom in travel.