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The collection began in 1975 when French racing driver Hervé Poulain commissioned his friend Calder to paint his BMW 3.0 CSL (above). Below: BMW 3.0 CSL painted by Frank Stella, 1976.The Art Cars have been displayed around the world and are on permanent display at the BMW museum in Munich, Germany.

BMW 3.0 CSL painted by Frank Stella, 1976.

In the first years of the project, primarily racing cars were transformed into art objects – some of these even started in the famous 24-hour Le Mans race. Later the Art Car collection was extended to include series vehicles. In 1999 the American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer created the 15th BMW Art Car – she ‘described’ a BMW V12 Le Mans racing car with her word-art, calling her artwork ‘Truisms’.

BMW M1 group 4 racing version painted by Andy Warhol, 1979.

BMW M3 group A racing version painted by Ken Done, 1989.

BMW Z1 painted by A.R Penck, 1991.

Established in 1975, the BMW Art Car Collection now includes 16 works by prominent artists – including David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Roy Litchenstein, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol – each making a unique artistic statement about the appearance and meaning of cars in our time. The Art Cars reflect the cultural and historical development of art, design and technology.It was the French racing driver Hervé Poulain who first commissioned an artist – his friend Alexander Calder – to paint his BMW racecar in the early 1970’s and this was the spark that led BMW to develop the Art Car program.

In April 2005, BMW selected Eliasson for its 16th Art Car commission, with input from an international board of curators comprising Bruce W. Ferguson, dean of Columbia University in New York; Pi Li from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Peking; Suzanne Pagé, director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Francisco; Donna de Salvo, chief curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; and Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, assistant head curator of the Bavarian State Picture Collections.

Manned Cloud is a flying hotel proposed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud.Whale-shaped airship, developed with French national aerospace research body ONERA, will be able to accommodate 40 guests and have a range of 5,000 km. Massaudanned Cloud will have a cruising speed of 130 km/h and a top speed of 170 km/h. Two two-deck cabin will contain amenities including a restaurant, a library, a fitness suite and a spa. There will also be a sun deck on top of the double helium-filled envelopes.

The SK 6 phonograph and radio for Braun. Dieter Rams & Hans Gugelot’s landmark design — the first hifi with a clear plexiglas lid — is an update of the original SK 4, introduced in 1956. The series was known as the “Schneewitchensarg” — translated directly: “Snow White’s Coffin”.I’ll quote Khoi Vinh: “still more beautiful than any model of iPod ever”.

Hani Rashid of Asymptote, who designed the hotel with colleague Lise Anne Couture describes the building’s design and it’s architecture as: “A perfect union and harmonious interplay between elegance and spectacle. The search for us was to achieve an inspired architectural response to what one might call the ‘art and poetics’ of speed, specifically as it relates to Formula 1 and motor racing. That notion coupled with the making of a building that celebrates Abu Dhabi.”