Mercedes-Benz Sculpture at Detroit Auto Show

DETROIT -- At last year's Detroit auto show, Mercedes showed off a sculpture: a black resin form rising from floor like Venus from sea - or a Terminator from a pool of mercury.

This year's sculpture is a loopy frame of arcs and pads, inspired by forms of microscopic diatoms, Calla lily blossoms, Boeing 747 wings and future-blended airliner concepts.

Hartmut Sinkwicz and Koert Groenwald of the design department presented the concept; Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz's design chief, was too ill to fly, the company's media representatives said.

Last year's sculpture was titled, "Aesthetics 1," whereas this one is called - wait for it - "Aesthetics 2," which represents a car's interior, while last year was an exterior theme. The piece sums up Mercedes-Benz's "ambient aesthetics" ideas, in which nature lends inspiration. "This is only the aesthetics," said Mr. Groenwald. "It is a piece of that old dream of designers to be free from functional requirements of air bags or screens."

The frame, he said, was inspired by the structure of the diatom, as well as by the moving forms of sharks and manta rays. (From car-design heaven, General Motors' Bill Mitchell is waving.) A part of the frame sweeps through the structure as a center console.

White shapes, representing seats, are inspired by flower petals, while the winglike shape of the dash connects nature with the machine, through aviation. "The water drop is the most streamlined aerodynamic shape," Mr. Groenwald said.

The piece's multijets, which look like oversize chrome ventilation blowers on a dashboard, have a futurist appeal, but they also evoke the blowers on the SLS AMG, too, to encapsulate a little visual joke: cool your jets.

Mr. Groenwald said the sculpture was symmetrical to emphasize the harmony between driver and passenger, which he said contrasted with the driver-centric messages of other premium makers' interiors. He didn't have to say, "BMW."