Case Study: 032c x CUPRA

On Monday, we unveiled our design for an inflatable car cover for the new CUPRA Raval, revealing our shared interest in themes of cultural (in)visibility and mobility.

Born from a motorsport heritage and known for bringing a challenger spirit to the automotive industry, CUPRA has built a distinct identity through vehicles that merge emotional design, performance, and contemporary mobility. With the CUPRA Raval, the brand brings that energy directly into the context of the city.

032c responded to prompt with an accessories capsule that would meld the brand’s vocabulary of precision and performance with the subcultural ethos of Germany’s capital. We thought: we make garments and DIY emblems for people in our city, why not make them for cars, too? We borrowed from the unofficial visual systems that compete with advertising in Berlin every day: stickers, wheat-paste posters, flyers, temporary occupations of public space. The city already has a graphic identity. Most of it wasn’t commissioned.

Bringing this visual language into dialogue with CUPRA’s design DNA, we developed a series of interventions that translated the energy of Berlin into the specific context of the CUPRA Raval. Then, our fashion design team literally pumped it up, creating an inflatable car cover that plays with themes of display and disguise, revealing and concealing. Luxury culture typically rewards visibility. Urban subcultures sometimes reward the opposite, or approach it from the edge. The car cover allows for an expression of identity that can modulate to different contexts while transforming the vehicle into a temporary architectural object.

We put the idea in motion through a CUPRA x 032c event in Berlin on Monday, testing the adaptability of the concept (it worked) and animating the design dialogue. The CUPRA City Garage presentation in Berlin-Mitte brought the project into conversation with audiences already engaged in the intersection of design, mobility, and culture. Below are images from the evening, where Maria Koch, 032c Readytowear’s Creative Director, and Giuseppe Fiordispina, CUPRA Germany’s Marketing Director, delivered a welcome speech before unveiling the CUPRA Raval.