Mobility entertainment platform – Hyundai SOLATI Moving Studio

Last year South Korean mobility company Hyundai, in conjunction with SM Entertainment, approached tangerine to collaborate on a new mobility entertainment platform. The result was the creation of the Solati Moving Studio, a moving broadcast studio built within a Hyundai Solati van.

The aim of the design project was to show the van’s versatility and effectively co-brand the space to highlight Hyundai’s partnership with SM Entertainment and their celebrity clientele.

“tangerine is helping Hyundai to challenge the meaning of mobility, to move beyond transportation and becomes a provider of experience and entertainment”, says Young Choo, tangerine’s Head of Seoul Studio and Project Lead.

“Hyundai and SM Entertainment wanted to create an exclusive, bespoke platform that could offer a unique environment to host on-the move recording sessions and live streaming, a bit like the car-pool karaoke skit James Corden does on The Late Late Show in the US, but taken to a new level,” Choo explains.

For tangerine’s designers, whose work includes turnkey portable hotel solutions for Snoozebox and premium seating for the world’s leading airlines, Solati was another small-space design challenge that required ingenuity and innovative thinking, within the tightest of constraints. The moving studio had to be capable of recording, editing and broadcasting live interviews of K-pop bands while on the move. The challenge was getting the balance between creating a cool, premium and comfortable environment for the band at the back of the van, while meeting the technical and functional demands of the crew and create enough space to house all of the equipment.

To understand the full needs of each stakeholder, tangerine consulted with specialist engineers in sound, lighting and film to understand the requirements of the production crew. The team also consulted technicians who had previously worked on the Top Gear television programme, to help the designers ensure that the studio worked effectively while on the move and would deliver a high-quality recording environment in such an unconventional format.

The final design provided a practical solution that met the varying needs of the K-pop performers, the production crew and the entertainment company. The design is able to integrate audio visual systems into a mobile platform whilst overcoming challenges in the form of reverberations in sound and the potential danger of heat generation in a confined area.

The design is smart and stylish, providing a sleek backdrop for broadcasting whilst simultaneously accommodating all the necessary equipment for the production crew in a spatially constrained environment.