AT the Detroit auto show in January, Adrian van Hooydonk, the director of BMW Group Design, had a gender-bending surprise for reporters examining the new BMW Z4 with a retractable hardtop.
The 2009 Z4 will be one of BMW’s attractions at the New York auto show, which holds media previews this week at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center before opening to the public on Friday.
To pick the designers for the Z4 project, the automaker held a competition. Designers from both BMW studios — at the headquarters in Munich and at DesignworksUSA in Newbury Park, Calif. — submitted sketches and eventually full-size clay models. To ensure that personalities were not a factor in the judging, the creators remained anonymous.
No one was more surprised by the outcome than the two German women: Ms. Blasi because it was the first full-size clay model she had done since she was hired at the Munich studio in 2003, and Ms. Arnaout because she had just switched to interior auto design at DesignworksUSA. Previously, as a product designer since 2000 at the California studio — which also does designs under contract for other companies — she had worked on things like vacuum cleaners and sports equipment.
No comments:
Post a Comment