The following link is for an article in the New York Times discussing Pardo and other designers. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/automobiles/11DESIGN.html
Just in case the link doesn't work here is the article without pictures:
What in Creation? Designers' After-Hours Pursuits
By PHIL PATTON
Published: June 11, 2006
I SPEND a lot of time with leather," said Margaret Hackstedde, director of color and trim design for the Chrysler Group. Nothing kinky, though: away from the office, she is devoted to saddles and bridles as a competitive rider.
"People make fun of me for spending so much time cleaning my tack," she said. "But I find it soothing." That tack is the gear that Ms. Hackstedde and her horse, Ritchie, use when riding.
During the day, she dresses future automobile interiors with new materials, but every day after work she heads over to the Bloomfield Hunt Club in suburban Detroit to ride. She is an expert in dressage, a type of show riding that is perhaps most like dancing or figure skating and is similarly judged on precision and style.
Ms. Hackstedde's hobby — dressing horsepower in stylish gear — is a metaphor for what all auto designers do.
Unlike automobile executives who tend to golf or tinker with cars in their off hours, designers often pursue more aesthetic avocations when they are away from their vocations.
For these creative people, the line between profession and hobby often blurs. Ms. Hackstedde's devotion to dressage goes back to her teenage years and she is distinguished in the sport, which has firmly established traditions and insignia. But even at the riding club she could not resist redesigning the club colors to personalize and vary them.
The connections afforded by a designer's hobby can be revealing. Not long ago, Ms. Hackstedde's contacts in the riding world gained her a private tour of the queen's royal stables in London.
"I saw the gear for the queen's guard and got to look at the coronation carriage," she said. As she made note of the materials involved, the experience provided a reminder that auto design was born in coachbuilding.
Many designers take photos, sketch or paint or assemble collections of designs. Ed Welburn, vice president for global design at General Motors, collects cocktail shakers as he travels the world to supervise studios. At his home in Michigan, he displays his collection of these elegant Art Deco and modern designs.
In contrast to the natty Mr. Welburn, Camilo Pardo, a Ford designer, seeks inspiration from gritty urban streets and colorful racetracks for the paintings, sculptures and furniture that he creates in his off hours.
Mr. Pardo's energetic oil paintings of cars, women and races hang in galleries and in Ford's corporate suites. The designer of the Ford GT, Mr. Pardo is chief designer in the company's Living Legends Studio.
Mr. Pardo lives in an old commercial building on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit; his studio contains chunks of old cars and an entire tiny Fiat. He said the urban scene outside his loft influences his work.
"The street definitely has a reflection on your work," he said. "New York or Paris shaped a lot of artists. Being from Detroit means working in an industrial environment — a lot of things are falling apart. It's deconstructive."
In Detroit, an old car seat might sit on a sidewalk as extemporaneous seating. No wonder Mr. Pardo was inspired to build a sofa from a car seat with fenderlike arms and another — astonishingly comfortable — made of thick vertical aluminum plates. Mr. Pardo also designs interiors and clothing. He recently did a room for the television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." For the unveiling of his original GT40 concept car, Mr. Pardo created outfits for female models inspired by pit crew uniforms. He has also designed clothing based on checkered flags used in racing.
Mr. Pardo was the force behind a legendary party held each January during the Detroit auto show; rival designers mingle in his studio amid jazz riffs and mini-shows of Mr. Pardo's fashions. One year he infamously dressed models in outfits made of nothing but chocolate.
Mr. Pardo's painting is as intense as his work in Ford's studios — as if racing to meet a corporate deadline. "I don't paint leisurely," he said. "I have deadlines, a show or a commission. It is goal-oriented. I settle in with a glass of wine and some great music, old rock 'n' roll or electronic bossa nova. It takes energy and pressure."
Another restless designer's hand belongs to Chris Bangle, chief of design for the BMW Group, who is never without a notebook — he has filled hundreds over the years. In these visual diaries, he sketches not only cars and dream cars, but also ideas for objects as far ranging as shoes and buildings. Mr. Bangle and other BMW designers worked on their off hours to create a sculpture celebrating their profession. "The Art of Auto Design" is a huge 30-ton wall of marble installed in the New Collection, one of the art museums in the Munich complex called the Pinakothek.
"Cars are the sculpture of everyday life," Mr. Bangle said; the Munich sculpture idealizes the profession. The marble came from a quarry near Carrara, Italy, where Michelangelo obtained the stone for his sculptures. The designers rolled up their sleeves and carved, giving the stone its final polishing by hand. There is a subtext to the piece as well: peeking from behind the marble, visible only at the sides, is an assemblage of real auto parts, like exhaust pipes and suspension struts. At last, the designers managed to push the engineers into the background.
If Mr. Bangle sometimes sounds like an evangelist for design, Michael Burton, director of interior design for General Motors, felt the call to evangelism of a higher plane. He spends Sundays at the Hope United Methodist Church in Southfield, Mich., where he is a lay teacher and preacher.
Mr. Burton says his religious presentation is less intense than what he experienced growing up in a Pentecostal household. And while it may seem a long way from the church to the design studio, the two endeavors have more in common than one might at first suspect.
His avocational ministry is a reminder of the demand on designers to sell as well as to design. Proselytizing to executives, engineers and the press is crucial to getting one's designs actually built.
For a concept version of the Buick Enclave sport wagon, Mr. Burton designed a pair of clever ceiling-mounted double-screen DVD players, for which G.M. is seeking a patent. The screens slide forward and backward on a track and can keep two children simultaneously happy watching different movies.
When Mr. Burton recently presented a new interior, he did so not with hard-sell fire and brimstone but in a deep, confident, soothing voice that rises and falls comfortably like a Buick with a well-tuned suspension. That mode was ideally suited for extolling virtues like the "halo lighting" of the interior.
Dave
Just in case the link doesn't work here is the article without pictures:
What in Creation? Designers' After-Hours Pursuits
By PHIL PATTON
Published: June 11, 2006
I SPEND a lot of time with leather," said Margaret Hackstedde, director of color and trim design for the Chrysler Group. Nothing kinky, though: away from the office, she is devoted to saddles and bridles as a competitive rider.
"People make fun of me for spending so much time cleaning my tack," she said. "But I find it soothing." That tack is the gear that Ms. Hackstedde and her horse, Ritchie, use when riding.
During the day, she dresses future automobile interiors with new materials, but every day after work she heads over to the Bloomfield Hunt Club in suburban Detroit to ride. She is an expert in dressage, a type of show riding that is perhaps most like dancing or figure skating and is similarly judged on precision and style.
Ms. Hackstedde's hobby — dressing horsepower in stylish gear — is a metaphor for what all auto designers do.
Unlike automobile executives who tend to golf or tinker with cars in their off hours, designers often pursue more aesthetic avocations when they are away from their vocations.
For these creative people, the line between profession and hobby often blurs. Ms. Hackstedde's devotion to dressage goes back to her teenage years and she is distinguished in the sport, which has firmly established traditions and insignia. But even at the riding club she could not resist redesigning the club colors to personalize and vary them.
The connections afforded by a designer's hobby can be revealing. Not long ago, Ms. Hackstedde's contacts in the riding world gained her a private tour of the queen's royal stables in London.
"I saw the gear for the queen's guard and got to look at the coronation carriage," she said. As she made note of the materials involved, the experience provided a reminder that auto design was born in coachbuilding.
Many designers take photos, sketch or paint or assemble collections of designs. Ed Welburn, vice president for global design at General Motors, collects cocktail shakers as he travels the world to supervise studios. At his home in Michigan, he displays his collection of these elegant Art Deco and modern designs.
In contrast to the natty Mr. Welburn, Camilo Pardo, a Ford designer, seeks inspiration from gritty urban streets and colorful racetracks for the paintings, sculptures and furniture that he creates in his off hours.
Mr. Pardo's energetic oil paintings of cars, women and races hang in galleries and in Ford's corporate suites. The designer of the Ford GT, Mr. Pardo is chief designer in the company's Living Legends Studio.
Mr. Pardo lives in an old commercial building on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit; his studio contains chunks of old cars and an entire tiny Fiat. He said the urban scene outside his loft influences his work.
"The street definitely has a reflection on your work," he said. "New York or Paris shaped a lot of artists. Being from Detroit means working in an industrial environment — a lot of things are falling apart. It's deconstructive."
In Detroit, an old car seat might sit on a sidewalk as extemporaneous seating. No wonder Mr. Pardo was inspired to build a sofa from a car seat with fenderlike arms and another — astonishingly comfortable — made of thick vertical aluminum plates. Mr. Pardo also designs interiors and clothing. He recently did a room for the television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." For the unveiling of his original GT40 concept car, Mr. Pardo created outfits for female models inspired by pit crew uniforms. He has also designed clothing based on checkered flags used in racing.
Mr. Pardo was the force behind a legendary party held each January during the Detroit auto show; rival designers mingle in his studio amid jazz riffs and mini-shows of Mr. Pardo's fashions. One year he infamously dressed models in outfits made of nothing but chocolate.
Mr. Pardo's painting is as intense as his work in Ford's studios — as if racing to meet a corporate deadline. "I don't paint leisurely," he said. "I have deadlines, a show or a commission. It is goal-oriented. I settle in with a glass of wine and some great music, old rock 'n' roll or electronic bossa nova. It takes energy and pressure."
Another restless designer's hand belongs to Chris Bangle, chief of design for the BMW Group, who is never without a notebook — he has filled hundreds over the years. In these visual diaries, he sketches not only cars and dream cars, but also ideas for objects as far ranging as shoes and buildings. Mr. Bangle and other BMW designers worked on their off hours to create a sculpture celebrating their profession. "The Art of Auto Design" is a huge 30-ton wall of marble installed in the New Collection, one of the art museums in the Munich complex called the Pinakothek.
"Cars are the sculpture of everyday life," Mr. Bangle said; the Munich sculpture idealizes the profession. The marble came from a quarry near Carrara, Italy, where Michelangelo obtained the stone for his sculptures. The designers rolled up their sleeves and carved, giving the stone its final polishing by hand. There is a subtext to the piece as well: peeking from behind the marble, visible only at the sides, is an assemblage of real auto parts, like exhaust pipes and suspension struts. At last, the designers managed to push the engineers into the background.
If Mr. Bangle sometimes sounds like an evangelist for design, Michael Burton, director of interior design for General Motors, felt the call to evangelism of a higher plane. He spends Sundays at the Hope United Methodist Church in Southfield, Mich., where he is a lay teacher and preacher.
Mr. Burton says his religious presentation is less intense than what he experienced growing up in a Pentecostal household. And while it may seem a long way from the church to the design studio, the two endeavors have more in common than one might at first suspect.
His avocational ministry is a reminder of the demand on designers to sell as well as to design. Proselytizing to executives, engineers and the press is crucial to getting one's designs actually built.
For a concept version of the Buick Enclave sport wagon, Mr. Burton designed a pair of clever ceiling-mounted double-screen DVD players, for which G.M. is seeking a patent. The screens slide forward and backward on a track and can keep two children simultaneously happy watching different movies.
When Mr. Burton recently presented a new interior, he did so not with hard-sell fire and brimstone but in a deep, confident, soothing voice that rises and falls comfortably like a Buick with a well-tuned suspension. That mode was ideally suited for extolling virtues like the "halo lighting" of the interior.
Dave
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