Designing Audis: Stefan Sielaff and his staff of designers at Audi are working to fulfill the company's credo, "Vorsprung durch Technik" ("Progress Through Technology") both inside and out.At 45, Stefan Sielaff has been working on automotive design Automotive design is the profession involved in the development of motor vehicles or more specifically road vehicles. This most commonly refers to automobiles but also refers to motorcycles, trucks, buses, coaches, and vans. for German marques--Audi, in particular--for quite sometime. He joined Audi AG in 1990, the year he obtained a master's degree master's degree n. An academic degree conferred by a college or university upon those who complete at least one year of prescribed study beyond the bachelor's degree. Noun 1. in vehicle design from the Royal College of Art in London London, city, Canada London, city (1991 pop. 303,165), SE Ont., Canada, on the Thames River. The site was chosen in 1792 by Governor Simcoe to be the capital of Upper Canada, but York was made capital instead. London was settled in 1826. , which he attended on an Audi-funded scholarship. He initially concentrated on interiors at Ingolstadt. Then it was to a studio in Munich, where he worked on interiors for Audi and VW vehicles. Next it was Sitges, Spain, to work on the development of the Design Center Europe in 1995, then it was back to Munich in '97, where he ran the Audi Design Centre, before moving back to Ingolstadt that year to become head of Interior Design at Audi. He switched companies in 2003, when he became design director of the Interior Competence Center of DaimlerChrysler in Sindelfingen. But it was back to Audi a few years later, and he is now head of Design. He acknowledges that throughout his career his approach is predicated on a "very German way of doing car design, the philosophy of form follows function. Very clean, very precise, which is still, today, a significant factor of Audi design." A Modernist approach, where details trump ornamentation ornamentation In music, the addition of notes for expressive and aesthetic purposes. For example, a long note may be ornamented by repetition or by alternation with a neighboring note (“trill”); a skip to a nonadjacent note can be filled in with the intervening . [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Bitter & the Sweet Sometimes being a designer is bittersweet bittersweet, name for two unrelated plants, belonging to different families, both fall-fruiting woody vines sometimes cultivated for their decorative scarlet berries. . That is, he recalls his first big break: working on the Audi quattro
The Audi Quattro is a famous and historically significant road and rally car produced by the German maker Audi. Spyder sports car study, a concept vehicle that appeared at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1991. He says that the vehicle, although finished in orange paint, was made out of aluminum. He believed that it was important to show what the car is made from, to show it both inside and out. "So we did the fuel cap outside and trim pieces inside with aluminum." This approach has been deployed on other Audi vehicles, like the TT. "This relationship of aluminum and Audi and how to show it was a very important step for me at the beginning of my career in design." He says one of the characteristics of Audi design is "If that was sweet, how about the bitterness? The quattro Spyder never made it into production. He calls it a "very disappointing experience." But there is, to mix metaphors, a silver (or aluminum) lining: he suggests that the recently launched R8 has "the genetic code of the original idea." The Frustration Then there's the frustration. While there is something to be said for having a job as a designer, there are things that are frustrating frus·trate tr.v. frus·trat·ed, frus·trat·ing, frus·trates 1. a. To prevent from accomplishing a purpose or fulfilling a desire; thwart: . Like tussling with the engineers (e.g., he says that one of the design aspects of an Audi is a roof that's sporty sport·y adj. sport·i·er, sport·i·est 1. Appropriate for sport or participation in sports. 2. Exhibiting sportsmanship; sporting. 3. Flashy; jazzy. and low, which "Always gives us a lot of discussions with the engineers about head clearance and entry clearance Entry Clearance is a catch all term under UK Immigration legislation that refers to both visas and entry certificates issued to persons seeking to enter the UK. The point being, that while all visa nationals will require a visa to enter the UK, there are certain "), then once things seem to be resolved, to discover that the cost target will be exceeded with that solution. "At the end of the day I am a designer"--and he says that designers "always want to have the best"--"but I am also a manager of the company and I have to guarantee that we earn money." He acknowledges that throughout automotive history there have been companies that "produced fantastic cars--but the company went bankrupt BANKRUPT. A person who has done, or suffered some act to be done, which is by law declared an act of bankruptcy; in such case he may be declared a bankrupt. 2. It is proper to notice that there is much difference between a bankrupt and an insolvent. ." Which is not the course he will pursue. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Driving Forward Then there's another kind of frustration. Like many companies with multiple design studios, at Audi there are design competitions. "When the designers work against each other, one guy wins and the other guys or directions lose. This is something that happened to me many times." But it is part of the game. How does one overcome that particular frustration born of losing a competition? Starting another project. Working on the next one. One interesting comment from Sielaff is that up to this point he has no vehicle he's worked on that is his favorite or in some way definitive. "Whenever you finish a project, you are convinced the next one will be the better one. This is the thing that drives us forward." Gary S. Vasilash gsv@autofieldguide.com by Gary S. Vasilash EDITOR-IN-CHIEF What would he design if he wasn't the head of Audi Design? "I would design boats," which he describes as being a "fantastic mixture of architecture and a dynamic object." An architect he admires is Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, February 28, 1929) is a Pritzker Prize winning architect based in Los Angeles, California. His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. : http://www.pritzkerprize.com/gehry.htm A boat producer he thinks is first-rate is Wally wally Noun pl -lies Brit slang a stupid or foolish person [from the name Walter] Noun 1. : http://www.wally.com/default.asp?bflash=1 |
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