Adrian Van Hooydonk

3/12/2014
Adrian van Hooydonk, irector of Design, BMW Group - Car Design News
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Home > Design Interview s > Adrian van Hooydonk, Director of Design, BMW Group
Interview: Adrian Van Hooydonk, Director of Design, BMW Group

by Joe Simpson and Ow en Ready 04 Apr 2011
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Since we last interviewed Adrian Van Hooydonk, much has happened: he replaced Chris Bangle as Director of BMW Design; BMW launched several important new models, including the 5 and 6 series and Rolls Royce Ghost; and Mini's brand has expanded. Meanwhile, Gert Hildebrand departed Mini to be replaced by Anders Warming as Director of Design. With all of this occurring on Van Hooydonk's watch - plus the announcement of the hotly anticipated sub-brand i' - we felt it time to catch up with the Dutch designer, who now steers design for the group he has been with since 1992. It doesn't feel like long since we last caught up with you, but a lot has happened in the group. What can you tell us, specifically about 'i'? We're extremely busy. You obviously know about our activities in terms of the future of mobility; we're going to create a sub-brand out of that. For us in the design team, that creates a whole range of opportunities. We're not just designing new cars, we're designing a form language. We need to be conscious of the fact that this is going to be a sub-brand, meaning that there will be successor cars and additional vehicle in this brand, so what we're trying to do now is set up a design language that will last for a long time and that we can also develop further.
BMW group design director, Adrian Van Hooydonk. Click for larger images
Incoming Mini Director of Design, Anders Warming, with the Rocketman - unveiled at the Geneva motor show
It starts with one car of course, the i3, and that's a somewhat compact but fairly radical car, just in terms of how it's built and how it's driven - fully electric, carbon fibre structure to counter the weight of the battery. And the proportions are all different of course, because the battery is down below and the people sit up on top. So it will be slightly taller. That poses some challenges. It's easier to do a low-slung car in an elegant and sporty way than a taller car. But I think we've managed to solve it. So did you create a separate design team?
Former Mini Design Director, Gert Hildebrand, and the Countryman
Rolls Royce Ghost was one of the first cars launched under Van Hooydonk's stewardship of the group
Van Hooydonk introduces the i sub-brand
Yes we have, Benoit Jacob - a very experienced guy who's been part of our team for a while - is leading it and he's heading up this team. We basically set them apart, in a separate space, to deal with this sub-brand. We can think about it like M Cars, which are also a sub-brand of BMW. And we have developed a whole form language that will identify an M Car. The i subbrand will be even further apart from BMW than the M cars. Because BMWs are dynamic, Ms are even more so, BMWs are also efficient, and this new sub-brand will be extremely efficient. That's where we're focused. Some things will identify it as part of the BMW group - things like precision and premium, detail design quality because we know there will be electric cars in the market but very few, if any, premium electric vehicles. This has been keeping us very busy. But it's also the kind of opportunity you only get once
Above and below: impressions of how the forthcoming i-cars (i3 and i8) will look
The new 6 series and 6 series cabriolet, recently launched
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in a designer's life. Which is very exciting. From a form and design language point of view, what are you grappling with in these future cars and their look? Because there's a debate going on out there that on a basic level says a green car should look identifiably different - like the Prius', or it should look the same - like a normal car'. What's your view? Our view is that it should look different. Because the technology that we're using is so new, it would be a shame not to highlight it through a new design. And I also think that the first customers we are going to have will be early adopters, people that are going to be quite proud of the fact that they bought such a new type of vehicle.
The upper carbon fiber structure of the forthcoming i3
Latest sketch impressions of the forthcoming i3 and i8
innovative powertrains (like the i cars) should People's expectations of electric look different vehicles are still quite negative. They think they're going to get a toaster on wheels. That's what they know in terms of electric mobility. We are aware of this and our job is to do a design that is desirable and that people will find cool.
The third generation Prius: Van Hooydonk believes that vehicles with new and
The current e90 BMW M3. Van Hooydonk suggests BMW has developed a specific, separate language for the M cars, and that i cars will be similarly related yet positioned even further away from the mainstream cars
It needs to be sold on this emotional attraction first and foremost because we are BMW, this is what we do. For Toyota, maybe it's enough for them to make a car that looks different. So that once people have seen it, they know it and they will buy it. I think that's OK for the first generation of vehicles, but then things will become more competitive and the way it looks will be more and more important for these types of vehicle. Continues
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We're also interested in the way that 'i' is going to play against the traditional BMW brand, and also Mini... I think at this company we've been quite successful at keeping the brands separate. From an engineering point of view, it all happens in the same building. But the design is done in separate teams, and before we even but pen to paper we always think quite carefully about what character this brand should express, or what this particular vehicle should express. Of course, I already know what the i vehicles look like so I can tell you that, no, it won't impinge upon Mini. Can we expect more of a step change with Mini in the future, or more of a gradual evolution? I think the Mini form language will get a bit broader, going forward. It's not so much to do with Anders coming in and Gert leaving, it's more to do with the natural life span of the brand. For the first ten years we had to make sure everybody understood what Mini was all about, and we did it with one car and then some close derivatives. And we did it also with a design that was very reminiscent of the original car. Now with the Countryman, which was done still on Gert's watch, Mini takes its first step outside of its history. The Countryman is a car that doesn't have a predecessor in Mini's heritage, so it's the first step outside. The Paceman concept shows how we can go a little bit further still. And now I think we will come to a point with the core cars of Mini, where we probably have to move a little bit more. The Paceman is the first Mini that's slightly broken away - I'm talking about the taillamp graphic - from the almost formulaic nature of all the previous Minis. It still feels very Mini, but the graphics are changing. Is that something we can expect going forward? Yes you can. And it really depends on the car. On Paceman, you cannot believe - or you probably actually can believe - by just turning the lamps through 90 degrees what a difference it makes. We have to be careful that we don't become a prisoner of our own success, in a sense. And we need to make sure that we change it before it's too late. Because if you hit a down cycle, then you're in stress and then you have to change. It's better to make changes when you're still at the top, and Paceman starts to show some of that. How will your research methods, and what you take from your customers, change? There are new techniques evolving, so what are you doing that's different here? We do a couple of things really. At the beginning of a project, I try to send the designers on trips, to locations in the world that seem relevant to the car that
Van Hooydonk says that, with the Paceman, the company were showing how much of a shift in appearance could be achieved, simply by turning an element - such as the taillamp - through 90 degrees
Vision Effecient Dynamics Concept, which will inform a lot of the i8's design language
Van Hooydonk with the latest generation (F10) 5 series. Click for larger images
Mini Rocketman sketch; smaller forthcoming Mini will be part of a sevenstrong model range
Mini Paceman sketch
Mini Paceman concept, shown in Detroit earlier this year, starts to expand the Mini range and hint at a greater shift away from the core hatchback's identity
BMW Designworks' Metro Inspiro, developed for Siemens, is an example of the range of products undertaken by BMW's in house design consultancy
Paceman uses materials such as copper and leather in a different manner to what we've seen before
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we're doing. Of course, Designworks is a studio we use extensively, they have a global footprint - with a studio in Singapore and Munich as well as LA. So we always make sure - be it a Mini, BMW or Rolls Royce - that we get some proposals from Designworks. And yes, we do clinics. But we do them very late in the game and at the point where we have actually selected one Interior from BMW DesignworksUSA design. But we're still interested in what Intermarine 55 Yacht normal people, living in the real world, think. What we don't do, which many other companies do, is show clinic audiences three designs and let them opinionate or choose one and tell us which they prefer. If you do that, we feel it always converges to the middle ground, where no one really has a problem or an issue, but probably also nobody is super-excited and what we need to do as a premium manufacturer is to create excitement. A car like the X6 would have never happened if we'd have sat it in front of a clinic audience. So that's all stuff that gets learned from and that's all filtered through me. I try to keep the design team as free as possible because, you can imagine it's easy to cramp them up. You can compare it to playing golf (I don't play golf by the way, but I did hit a few balls once) and in the beginning, without ever having had any lessons, I took the club, hit this ball and it went pretty well - 100 meters or so. Then I took one lesson, they told me you should stand like this, do this, do that, and the ball didn't go anywhere! That's my job, largely, to make sure that I am aware of all this stuff that goes on but make sure I filter this information to the design team. Because what we do is not oil painting by numbers. Continues
Modeller working in BMW's Munich studio
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What, in terms of the future - is the thing to watch in your view? In the past few month's we've watched Ford introduce HMI specifically for electric cars and Audi says that what it's doing with in-car technology is going to be the primary thing keeping it ahead of the game. Do you believe the same thing?
An element of BMW's Connected Drive vision - in which cars are able to communicate and spot hazards before the driver sees them. Click for larger images
I think so, because the drivetrain of course will be a large focal point for the next few years - everyone knows what's coming, in terms of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, but it's not really in the market yet. So that will lead to drastically different layouts and therefore new designs. But to us, the next step after that is the user interface. We are working on it, of course, but if you look at consumer electronics, it has already happened. If you look at the exterior of the object, it is less about that object, and more about what happens when you activate it, and what you can do and how it enhances your life, with all these apps that you never thought you were going to need, but that you desperately want now. In cars, I think we're looking at a similar development. Already, most of our cars have internet access or satellite radio, things like that, and it just makes the choice that you have, or the experiences you have in the car, that much more personal. Up until now you were able to select your choice of wood, leather, colors and materials. It won't stop there. On the computer screens, you will be able to see your music library, and everything will be seamless. From the minute you walk out of the door, you have it on your cell phone and in your pocket and then as soon as you sit in the car, you have it in the car. And all of this stuff, I think, will become a lot more defining of the character of the vehicle. And that is a growing design field for us. We're designing everything that comes up on the computer screen as well. So is there much more of a blurring of boundaries between technology and the design department?
Van Hooydonk mentions that everything appearing on a screen in a BMW vehicle is designed by his team Van Hooydonk sits in Geneva 2011's Vision ConnectedDrive concept
BMW Vision ConnectedDrive wall display from Geneva
Much-maligned iDrive system has matured into one of the most intuitive, pleasant to use HMIs currently available in any car
Vision ConnectedDrive concept showcases much of the company's future thinking about the connected car, technology and HMI
Yes, we do this (HMI/tech) in house, we do this in our design team. We have a specific team, but it's part of the design team, which designs everything that comes up on the screen - on every display. We feel that the whole will become a lot more seamless, and it needs to be. That's the expectation that our Attention to detail and quality of graphical rendering apparent in system sub-menus, customers have, but also from my such as this one for chassis set up on the design team, and we've been shaping BMW 5GT the team to reflect that. Where it used to be very separate - exterior people, interior people, color and trim people, over the last couple of years, we've moved these design teams a lot closer together. We actually merged interior design and color and trim several years ago - the UI group is part of that as well - so they're all one group. And actually, we lowered the boundaries between interior and exterior design too.
BMW Vision ConnectedDrive interior uses three different colors to denote the car's different modes - here seen in safety mode (orange)
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And they all start at the same point in time. Sounds strange now, but not so long ago, the exterior started, then the interior came a little later, color and trim after that, and what comes up on the screen even later. Now, of course, we all want to make sure that it all comes into one design and one character. So you must make sure that they all receive the same brief and all work together - and actually they inspire each other. With the HMI we have some engineering people that develop it from the software point of view, with programing, but we do it for look and feel - because we believe that for Rolls Royce, Mini, BMW, it should look different. Everybody wants to see a map display and a playlist, but you can do this with a different feel within each brand. This is the part of our design team that we're stocking up, and we're doing a lot more. The Vision ConnectedDrive concept really explains a lot about what we're doing and what we think about the future of this space. Related Articles: Who's where - Adrian Van Hooydonk named Director of BMW Group Design Designer Interview: Adrian van Hooydonk, Director Design, BMW Cars BMW launches i sub-brand Design Development: BMW 6 Series
BMW gauge pack evolution very apparent with recent models - hybrid of analogue and digital displays
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3/12/2014

New sletter Mem bership Advertise Contact Help

Interview: Adrian Van Hooydonk, Director of Design, BMW Group

Former Mini Design Director, Gert Hildebrand, and the Countryman

Van Hooydonk introduces the i sub-brand

The new 6 series and 6 series cabriolet, recently launched

The upper carbon fiber structure of the forthcoming i3

Latest sketch impressions of the forthcoming i3 and i8

New sletter Mem bership Advertise Contact Help

Interview: Adrian Van Hooydonk, Director of Design, BMW Group

Mini Paceman sketch

New sletter Mem bership Advertise Contact Help

Interview: Adrian Van Hooydonk, Director of Design, BMW Group

BMW Vision ConnectedDrive wall display from Geneva

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