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Interview with Archer Aviation Vice-President of Design & Innovation, Julien Montousse

Julien Mon­tousse (pro­nounced Mon­tu-zay), stud­ied at the Strate, Ecole de Design, lat­er moved to Gen­er­al Motors (7 years) and then on to Maz­da North Amer­i­can Oper­a­tions (14 years), where he became Senior Direc­tor of Design.

He joined Archer in Novem­ber 2020 as the company’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Design & Inno­va­tion and has spent the last two years, along with his team, cre­at­ing “The Mid­night eVTOL Look.”

Archer co-Founder and CEO, Adam Gold­stein, has said, “I swear, every time I hear Julien speak I feel like I need to go and get a sketch­pad and start cre­at­ing. He brings such an incred­i­ble emo­tion­al ener­gy to the cre­ative process.” Julien sug­gests in the inter­view, a spir­i­tu­al out­look on life, has influ­enced the Mid­night design.

The com­plet­ed air­craft has a unique and breath­tak­ing appeal. Julien and his team have raised the design bar very high.

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Chris Stonor Asks The Ques­tions.

After an esteemed design career with­in the auto­mo­tive indus­try why make the bold tran­si­tion to eVTOLs?

Dur­ing my ear­ly career I had a great inter­est in aquat­ic sub­mersibles for div­ing pur­pos­es. This led me to become a design con­sul­tant for the SpaceX Drag­on 2 inte­ri­or. I loved the imposed con­straints and chal­lenges. It was what sparked my inter­est in aero­space.

While I had an amaz­ing time at Maz­da and learned a lot, I always knew aero­space would be my next big step. Air mobil­i­ty is the new fron­tier to engage the human spir­it and become con­nect­ed with the plan­et. So, when the Archer oppor­tu­ni­ty came along, I jumped at the chance.

How did you gain the job?

The two co-founders mes­saged me in 2020. We met up. They showed me around Archer and dis­cussed their vision. At the time, I was head­ing Maz­da Design Amer­i­c­as in the U.S after hav­ing worked and lived a long peri­od in Japan. Then overnight, I chose to change careers and start again from scratch.

Do you have any regrets over your deci­sion?

Absolute­ly not. I have learned so much dur­ing the last two years. I need­ed new learn­ing curves and chal­lenges for me to grow and move for­ward in my work. But I still think of Maz­da every day. They remain part of my fam­i­ly.

Are there any sim­i­lar­i­ties between auto­mo­tive and eVTOL design?

They’re quite dif­fer­ent in their devel­op­ment. What we’re doing is bring­ing auto­mo­tive design exper­tise to a math­e­mat­i­cal-dri­ven aero­space. In cars, there is a cush­ion between the chas­sis with all its com­po­nents and the out­er skin. This pack­ag­ing exer­cise offers free­dom to make the car attrac­tive. In aero­space you don’t have this space. The air­craft struc­ture is the skin under aero­dy­nam­ic con­strains, while being the same aes­thet­ic out­er sur­face. There­fore, it is much hard­er to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful plane. All the require­ments need to be as one. For any slight sur­face devi­a­tion, for exam­ple, is a hit to the aircraft’s flight per­for­mance.

Julien Mon­tousse Speak­ing (7′ — 14′.10″)

How many design­ers are there in your team?

We have between 15 and 20 peo­ple in the team who are some of the most tal­ent­ed in the world. We had to begin from scratch. The air­craft goal along­side the book­ing app to the ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture was to con­cep­tu­alise a wholis­tic brand vision along­side an ide­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. For­tu­nate­ly, we have all the exper­tise in house to effec­tive­ly prove both good and bad ideas. This speeds up the process. For every 20 ideas, there is usu­al­ly one good one.

Where do you gain inspi­ra­tion?

In the car indus­try, ideas tend to be indi­vid­ual. With Archer it is more of a col­lec­tive effort. Every design solu­tion must be inter­weaved with air­craft per­for­mance. This required cer­tain dis­ci­plines to alto­geth­er design dai­ly on a white board. It is a new process for me and very enlight­en­ing. Mid­night has been a remark­able human sto­ry of shared design and engi­neer­ing.

You must have worked very hard to trans­form the look of The Mak­er to Mid­night in just two years?

It’s been an incred­i­ble time, although extreme­ly chal­leng­ing. We are cul­ti­vat­ing the “chal­lenger spir­it” with­in the Design Team to over­come chal­lenges and so we have always lived and breathed this project togeth­er. Reg­u­lar­ly work­ing up to 12 hours a day includ­ing some week­ends. Luck­i­ly, we love work­ing togeth­er.

How do you per­son­al­ly attract ideas?

I seek out beau­ti­ful objects that are pleas­ing to the eye. It could be a prod­uct, a car, even a plane. Take the Bugat­ti Mod­el 100 air­craft. This is extreme­ly beau­ti­ful and time­less. In styling, a short-cut is to make a prod­uct look graph­i­cal. This may be fresh, but the beau­ty tends to fade with­in 5 years. A more time­less look, which I learned at Maz­da, is based on reflec­tion-based sur­fac­ing. This cre­ates a beau­ti­ful air­craft design that reflects the envi­ron­ment by mov­ing in uni­son with the plane’s body. There are no hard or jagged sur­faces.

Who came up with the name Mid­night?

I believe our co-Founder and CEO, Adam (Gold­stein). This is a great name as it con­jures up the start of a new day, even a new era.

The air­craft design is breath­tak­ing. It has a bold, brave and beau­ti­ful look that com­bines pow­er with con­fi­dence. How did you achieve this?

Thank you. First, Mak­er was done with a dif­fer­ent team. It was designed before I arrived. The goal for Mid­night was to make a pas­sion­ate prod­uct that is beau­ti­ful to look at. The design is organ­ic where the aim was to bring emo­tion into an air­craft world that is 100 per­cent math­e­mat­i­cal. I want­ed to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful object. To achieve this we need­ed a big shift from math­e­mat­i­cal to emo­tion­al. There is a grace­ful­ness about Mid­night assist­ed by a great pro­por­tion between the wing-span and the body. Pro­por­tion came first. 

To cre­ate this, we viewed many dif­fer­ent eVTOLs. Few looked con­fi­dent. Some didn’t even look they could fly well. At a sub­con­scious lev­el, when a pas­sen­ger views a plane, con­fi­dence comes from the belief it will fly safe­ly. 

Inspi­ra­tion also comes from nature and so we stud­ied the wing ges­ture of birds of prey grace­ful­ly fly­ing around the sky. They por­tray a great con­fi­dence. We realised the ratio between their wingspan and body cre­ates that con­fi­dence. We also realised that just before the bird dives towards it prey, there is a strong kinet­ic move­ment in the wings that stalls it. Midnight’s wing shape is bent around the booms to express the ver­ti­cal move­ment. The design must clear­ly show the craft’s abil­i­ty to take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly along­side its cruis­ing effi­cien­cy. So when peo­ple look at it, they know this is nei­ther a plane nor a heli­copter, but an eVTOL.

Inte­grat­ing the air­craft to make it look “organ­i­cal­ly visu­al” must have been chal­leng­ing.

One of the key goals is to sim­pli­fy the look of a com­plex exte­ri­or archi­tec­ture by visu­al­ly inte­grat­ing com­po­nents such as fixed land­ing gear on to the body and the booms to the wing. You need to flow the sur­fac­ing which is not only pleas­ing to the eye, but where each area inter­con­nects. We want­ed to make Mid­night look at one with itself.

How did the design ini­tial­ly devel­op?

There were so many ideas. For exam­ple, well over 1,000 dif­fer­ent sketch­es on the white­boards. We con­struct­ed at least five dif­fer­ent poten­tial inte­ri­or cab­ins dur­ing the ear­ly stage. The process is daunt­ing and excit­ing at the same time.

Break­through design ideas could poten­tial­ly re-invent air trav­el. In the car indus­try each gen­er­a­tion improves five to ten per­cent. For us there was no prece­dent, where we had to cre­ate an all new prod­uct and an all new ecosys­tem to show­case a high lev­el of matu­ri­ty.

What are the biggest changes from the Mak­er?

The human con­nec­tion is, per­haps, the biggest. For exam­ple, the step­ping height on to the air­craft is much low­er on Mid­night and sim­i­lar to a mid­size SUV, where pas­sen­gers can car­ry a cof­fee and hold a case at the same time. On most eVTOLs it is way too high, where you have to first climb onboard into a small space and then need to crawl in. No, no, this is way too uncom­fort­able.

Please focus on the cab­in.

Mid­night is a com­mut­ing plane that is not only prac­ti­cal and com­fort­able, but also awak­ens the human spir­it. We want our cus­tomer to ful­ly embrace the fly­ing expe­ri­ence. We designed the seat to wrap around your body, so you can feel the move­ment of the craft and become one with the plane. 

We wished to cre­ate pri­va­cy for the pas­sen­ger by design­ing a par­tial divider between seats, as well as offer­ing indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. As you step onboard, we intend to project core flight infor­ma­tion into this divider such as your assigned seat, your name, along­side the booked des­ti­na­tion point and take-off time.

Then there are the large panoram­ic win­dows. This was a design pri­or­i­ty, so at 2,000 ft the pas­sen­ger can clear­ly engage with the city below.

You describe the seats as sus­tain­able. What do you mean?

Mate­ri­als used in the aero­space indus­try tend to be tra­di­tion­al. They are not eco-friend­ly. We need to evolve. So with sus­tain­able elec­tric flight, it is impor­tant to inte­grate mate­ri­als that are also sus­tain­able. We chose the mate­r­i­al of flax fibre for the back of our seats. The plant is high­ly absorbent of CO2 and requires lit­tle irri­ga­tion.

Leather is the base­line for a pre­mi­um look and feel in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. For Archer, the mass prop­er­ty of leather with­in Midnight’s low weight allowance pushed us to rethink an alter­na­tive solu­tion aligned with our brand ethos. We are study­ing a syn­thet­ic leather par­tial­ly com­posed from recy­cled plas­tic bot­tles. It has a sim­i­lar dura­bil­i­ty to leather and feels great to touch. We describe our cab­in as “pur­pose­ful com­fort”.

You talk of the use of noise-can­celling in the cab­in to reduce the sound of the rotors. Please explain.

We are still study­ing this idea. There are many approach­es to reduc­ing sound. There is glass thick­ness, sound-proof­ing mate­r­i­al, new tech­nolo­gies that will soon become avail­able, where noise can­celling could be inte­grat­ed into the seats. All of this is being looked at. I can see this occur­ring with­in five years or so.

You have spo­ken of bring­ing emo­tion into an aero­space world that is 100 per­cent math­e­mat­i­cal. I note you are some­one with a spir­i­tu­al out­look. Are you refer­ring to this?

It is how peo­ple react to the design. Until now aero­space is all para­met­ric. In Japan where I lived for 8 years, I learned about the trans­fer­ence of ener­gy. It became evi­dent to me, a craftsper­son can pass over human ener­gy through their design. The more a cre­ation comes from a person’s abil­i­ty and tal­ent rather than a machine, the more pos­si­ble this is. We con­scious­ly put this prac­tice into Midnight’s cre­ation.

We have not­ed this emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with those who have been up close to the Air­craft. They want to touch it, feel it and get close to it. This con­nec­tion can be a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence. 

Do you believe it’s pos­si­ble for a pas­sen­ger to become one with an air­craft? In WW2, Spit­fire pilots talked of becom­ing one with their plane when fly­ing it.

Yes. We want that con­nec­tion to hap­pen. Even if the flight is only for 10 min­utes, we want pas­sen­gers to be in the present and love the act of fly­ing. To be ful­ly con­nect­ed and engaged with Mid­night and not feel desen­si­tised in a com­mod­i­ty trans­port. We want to recre­ate the 1950s and that gold­en era of flight, when peo­ple loved to fly.

What response have you gained from pilots?

When we did a recent pho­to-shoot of Mid­night, we had a num­ber of heli­copter pilots, who walked past, enthus­ing, “I love this air­craft. I want to fly it. Where is the pro­gram? How can I become a pilot for Archer?” The craft con­nect­ed with them emo­tion­al­ly. That’s what we want to give back to the pilots — an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion. I would like to think that the pow­er of design is to cre­ate pride around a prod­uct and the expe­ri­ence it deliv­ers.

Please explain the ver­ti­cal light on the Mid­night nose which you describe as “your first brand DNA sig­na­ture”.

This is what we learned from car design. The front face speaks about the brand. You can look at a car from far away and recog­nise it as a Porsche or BMW or Tes­la. In aero­space this doesn’t exist. Almost each airplane’s nose design is a white cone-shape deprived of iden­ti­ty.

So for Mid­night we searched for a unique char­ac­ter and focused on ver­ti­cal exe­cu­tion bridg­ing the tip of the nose down to the front gear as one wholis­tic shape. The ver­ti­cal light is our visu­al sig­na­ture that rein­forces the ver­ti­cal move­ment at take-off and land­ing. It is a “form fol­lows func­tion” exam­ple at its best.

When peo­ple take a first flight on Mid­night, this may be their first time on an eVTOL. Will Archer cre­ate prod­ucts to com­mem­o­rate this expe­ri­ence? Even pro­duc­ing mod­els of Mid­night that can be bought in toy shops?

Absolute­ly. Mod­els and com­mem­o­ra­tive pieces can remind pas­sen­gers of their flight expe­ri­ence and inspire the younger gen­er­a­tion to become eVTOL pilots in the future.

To con­clude. The Mid­night look you and your team have cre­at­ed. Will there be any fur­ther design tweaks or is this it before Archer’s com­mer­cial entry in 2025?

Mid­night is our pro­duc­tion air­craft. We are extreme­ly pleased. The pub­lic response has been fan­tas­tic. I am so proud of the team. We aimed for some­thing tru­ly spe­cial and unique and we feel this has been achieved.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.archer.com

(Images: Archer Avi­a­tion)

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