Mercedes-Benz adds to its global network of Advanced Design Centres. In 2018, the brand with the star will open a new Centre in France’s “Silicon Valley” on the Côte d’Azur. With its Centre in the Sophia Antipolis Science and Technology Park, Mercedes-Benz is strengthening the creative and innovative potential of its global design network, which, using specialised skills, keeps track of trends around the world while allowing new ideas from different continents and cultures to feed into automotive design.
Some 50 designers from every discipline will help to endow the brand and products of Mercedes-Benz with unmistakable and timeless forms. With the new Centre on France’s Mediterranean coast, Mercedes-Benz is making a return to one of the birthplaces of the brand. It was in 1899 that Emil Jellinek, a businessman resident in Nice, took part for the first time in car races on the Côte d’Azur under the pseudonym “Monsieur Mercédès”, the first name of his daughter Mercédès. In 1902, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) registered “Mercedes” as a protected trademark.
The Advanced Design Centre near Antibes will be the new home of the designers in France. With a length of 50 meters and a width of 20 meters, the cylindrical structure lies embedded in a pine forest. Concrete and glass dominate the building’s clear-cut architectural lines. Thanks to all-round glazing, all the rooms are flooded with soft, Mediterranean light – ideal working conditions for the designers. Covering an area of over 3000 square meters, the structure provides around 50 designers with room in which to work. All the relevant disciplines of Mercedes-Benz Design will be represented there: from the conventional exterior and interior design to digital and UI/UX design, which is becoming ever more important in times of autonomous driving and human-machine communication.
New working and creative methods will also be used on the Côte d’Azur. Flat hierarchical and decision-making structures, flexible working in time and space, as well as a high degree of interdisciplinarity and international networking, are intended to meet the requirements of holistic design in the digital age. With new formats, it is hoped that, within a short time, complex issues will be addressed and action-driven results achieved. In this way, the Design Centre will also provide an important impetus for continuously advancing the Mercedes-Benz design philosophy of Sensual Purity as well as setting trends with new artistic ideas.
The new Advanced Design Centre is situated in the middle of the Sophia Antipolis Science and Technology Park, France’s “Silicon Valley”. Established in 1969, it is today home to around 36,300 employees of the approximately 2,230 companies on the 2400-hectare site, including Amadeus, SAP, Huawei, Hewlett Packard, Bayer, Thales.
