Gilles Vidal and Peugeot on car design

I spent some time this afternoon with Gilles Vidal, Vice President Design with Peugeot, and his team visiting Stanford. It was so refreshing to have a wide ranging conversation about automotive design with this very smart group. A key point – it’s not so much of a challenge now to design a well-engineered car. The…

Tadge Juechter – just what is a Corvette?

This evening I was at an Open Garage talk hosted by the Revs Program at Stanford [Link]. Tadge Juechter, chief engineer on the Corvette, shared with an audience of over 200 the features of the new seventh generation of the paradigm of the American sports car. At the heart of the design effort was the…

Revs at Pebble Beach Concours

Yesterday was the culmination of ME200 – a class at Stanford concerned with the historical significance of things. With about 30 students last term Reilly (Brennan), Jon (Feiber) David (Kelley), and I explored how cars connect with history. The objective – to judge which of the cars entered for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was…

critical design – what if?

I am in Manhattan at Bard Graduate Center, celebrating its twentieth anniversary, its explorations of decorative arts, design history and material culture in research, pedagogy, exhibition and curatorial practice [Link]. Like any good celebration we’re looking forward as well as back. This morning was about imagining the future of museum and gallery exhibition. This afternoon was…

just what is a car?

I am in Amsterdam for eDay – one of the regular business conferences organized by the Dutch magazine Emerce. Ji Lee, Facebook Creative Director, opened with a pep talk about social media: “Ideas are nothing. Doing is everything.” Then there were talks about advertising, platforms (not products), marketing and branding, selling cheaply to poor people…