Escapism in tough times: the Embraer Pulse

In a recent piece, we covered Embraer’s new office chair concept, an elegant design inspired in the cabin of the Brazilian manufacturer’s executive jets.

The Paradigma chair draws, in turn, from the conceptual work Embraer Design Ops (EDO) did for its futuristic air mobility concept, the Embraer Pulse.

Sources at Embraer told me with the Pulse they wanted to emulate what Harley Earl did for the automotive industry in 1938 with the Buick Y-Job: give form to a visionary concept that may not necessarily come into production. This move, though, spurred imagination and innovation in the industry and kicked off a creative competition of sorts between the different automobile brands to develop increasingly bolder ideas.

Well, the Pulse concept is the very particular way in which Embraer Design Ops (EDO) marked the firm’s 50th anniversary. The message is something like “it’s great to celebrate the achievements of the past 50 years, but let’s take a second to look also at the next 50”

The Pulse is, of course, an imaginary plane (at least for the foreseeable future!) but one that encapsulates some key trends of which we are likely to see more in a not so distant future, such as personal air mobility, the use of more airy and ergonomic cabin interiors and modular aircraft designs.

But, given the penchant of Embraer’s designers for out-of-the-box ideas, with don’t be surprised if some of its elements appear, on a not too distant date, in an existing aircraft model!