Since February 2009, Adrian van Hooydonk has been in charge of all
the design teams in the BMW Group. This means he is responsible for
the design of a large number of cars, motorcycles and other objects
every year. Hailing from the Netherlands, he is known as an
interdisciplinary and visionary thinker with a highly developed
business sense. He has a commanding and stylish presence, but his
basic attitude is one of candour. In the industry Adrian van Hooydonk
has made a name for himself as a design manager, and his visions are
considered groundbreaking.
The apprentice years: a life takes shape.
The chief designer of the BMW Group is a design man through and
through; he lives for industrial design in general and automobile
design in particular. Even as a child he was fascinated by things that
moved under their own power – cars. Adrian van Hooydonk followed
his early vocation and studied industrial design at Delft Polytechnic
University, where he chiefly got to know the technical side of product
design. He went more deeply into the art of draughtsmanship on one of
the auto industry’s most important seedbeds of talent, the Art
Center College of Design in Vevey, Switzerland, where he completed a
postgraduate degree. It was there that he first came into contact with
BMW, which ultimately led to a job in Munich once he had completed his
studies. Adrian van Hooydonk is happily cosmopolitan, but as a
Dutchman by birth he feels bound to the design tradition of his
homeland. At the same time he is strongly drawn to Italy, the home of
design, where in a gap between degree courses he had an opportunity to
work in the studio of Rodolfo Bonetto. There followed a short period
as a freelance designer in the Netherlands, from which a further facet
of Adrian van Hooydonk emerged: the design manager.
His philosophy: progressive thinking with an open mind.
Adrian van Hooydonk sees himself as generalist. He admires his early
mentor Rodolfo Bonetto as much as he does Chuck Pelly, the founder of
DesignworksUSA. Both have been able to combine two different worlds in
their work – those of industrial design and automotive design.
This integrated approach is reflected not only in his own career path,
starting as an exterior designer at BMW. As President of
DesignworksUSA Adrian van Hooydonk placed the emphasis on industrial
design before returning to BMW Design. It is an approach that remains
key to his philosophy today: car design is not a discipline that
stands on its own. It is embedded in people’s social environment
and bound up with other products that surround them. And so Adrian van
Hooydonk cultivates contact with other well-known designers or artists
and promotes numerous collaborative projects. For example, at the
Milan Furniture Fair he exhibits works created jointly with industrial
designers – these peer-to-peer exchanges of ideas serving as
both a source of inspiration and a yardstick for his own work. At a
personal level he is very interested in the work of Olafur Eliasson,
Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry and the
architectural practice Herzog & de Meuron.
His working method: creative freedom.
As Senior Vice President BMW Group Design, Adrian van Hooydonk is
working with a 500-strong team on the development of a keenly
emotional and authentic design language. He considers his work a
success if this language is appropriately decoded by the market and
consequently accepted. In a unique design process, Adrian van Hooydonk
succeeds in motivating his staff to achieve maximum creativity. In
this role as “design coach” he formulates the setting of
the task as broadly as possible. It is concept cars that grant the
design chief the greatest room for creative manoeuvre; they give him
the opportunity to spark off thought processes within the company as
well as the general public. In this he has had particular success with
the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics, where he has created an icon for the
future of driving pleasure. This concept car epitomises sustainable
mobility while at the same time embodying a perfect blend of
groundbreaking efficiency and hallmark BMW dynamics. With the BMW
Vision ConnectedDrive, another concept car, van Hooydonk has succeeded
in giving a face to the future connectivity of the automobile and in
designing the technologies of tomorrow with a strong element of
emotional appeal.
On the personal side.
Adrian van Hooydonk recharges his batteries by travelling, he enjoys
driving cars and riding motorbikes, speaks five languages, visits
museums and draws inspiration from art and architecture. He is
fascinated by what makes people tick, approaching them with great
sensitivity and close attention, and in this way finding the
appropriate solutions.
Adrian van Hooydonk is married and lives
in Munich.