#UnboringTheFuture is not just a programmatic hashtag but the name of Peugeot's exhibition at Fuorisalone 2019, set in a huge exposition space located at via Savona 56, in the Tortona District, and dominated by a five-meter tall lion, a gigantic rendition of the House’s symbol. Here visitors can have a glimpse of the future with the new Peugeot 208, also presented in its full electric version, and the E-Legend Concept. The marvellous retrofuturistic self-driving vehicle is the manifesto of the brand's view of tomorrow's mobility. But there is also space for an electric e-bike and a glorious vintage Peugeot racing bike. And there are even more statues of Peugeot lions, an entire army in front of the gigantic one. That’s where I meet with Gilles Vidal, the Director of Design of the brand founded in 1810 by Jean-Pierre and Jean-Frédéric Peugeot to produce coffee mills and - of course - bicycles.

What is Peugeot’s vision of design?
A few years ago we created Peugeot Design Lab, which is a design agency. They work a bit for the Peugeot brand, but they are an agency, so they work for every client in the world: aeroplanes, furniture, boats.

Where does this idea come from?
Peugeot started 210 years ago designing products, 80 years before we started to do cars. Unlike Porsche Design, for instance, we decided to keep the automotive knowledge close to this studio, skills that clients can’t find anywhere else.

It’s become quite fancy for automotive brands to be at Fuorisalone in Milan. And what about Peugeot?
That of Milano is not a Furniture Fair anymore, it’s a Design Week. The story for me as a designer is to give our vision of the future. For example, E-Legend. Every car manufacturer in the world can buy the driverless technology (sensors, lasers, software and so on) and put it in their vehicle. But how do you design an experience?

How do you design self-driving cars?
Autonomous driving gives back to people what’s more precious for them: time. Time to do something else in the vehicle's space. So we started imagining the car interiors as a room that's moving. Mobility design meets architecture, meets furniture and textile design, meets everything, even consumer electronics.

A huge Peugeot lion and an array of smaller ones populate Peugeot’s exhibition for Fuorisalone.
For this exhibition, we electrified the lion, which was first presented in last year’s Geneve motor show, because we are entering in the electric area. When we say that we’re designing experiences in our cars, not just an object, not just another car, but what’s the experience on a daily basis, and this is an experience: visitors are free to roam, and we’ll see where they’ll go. Designing experiences is also doing installations like this.

The E-Legend: is it someway linked to the brand’s heritage, or did you try to do something completely new?
A bit of both. For autonomous cars, if you put the right equipment then the job is done. But if it’s as simple as that then it's very robotic. All the cars will behave the same and maybe they will also look the same. As designers, we have the responsibility to put on the roads beautiful and meaningful objects, not just random neutral objects. It’s like an ugly building: it’s a shame. Everybody who creates something has the responsibility to put something as beautiful as he can in the world.

That’s a good title, thanks!
It’s true, it’s a responsibility. If you create something ugly or strange or weird it can be interestingly strange or can be ugly strange sometimes, but it's our responsibility. We said, let’s do the future interesting. So we went in our history to push the ideas far as we could: we picked the 504 coupé since it’s its 50th anniversary, but we decided to make it vintage, on purpose, to push the story as far as we can. So the car of the future, the autonomous car, it’s also a vintage car. It can have 60s blue velvet inside, all a balance between analogue and digital, tech versus the timeless of wood and natural material. That’s what we want in our future.