NATION
Ithe battalion
9A
Monday, April 12, 2004
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Hopeful auto designers
display their projects
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By Michelle Krebs
KRT CAMPUS
Amina Horozic, 21, a senior
Studying transportation design at
petroit’s College for Creative
Studies, nervously waits for Dave
Lyon, General Motors’ executive
director of design, to give some
sign whether or not he likes her
par sketches that cover the wall.
Since she and her brother
played with cars in their Harrison
Township home, Horozic, bom in
Sarajevo, Bosnia, has had a life
long dream to be a car designer.
Now, with her final school proj-
|ect, ihe dream is within her grasp.
She and other seniors are
[assigned as their last semester
project to design a GM vehicle
for 2020. GM’s sole require-
pient is that the futuristic vehi
cles use the skateboard-shaped
chassis of its Autonomy fuel
pell concept.
Horozic’s egg-shaped con
cept looks more like wild sci-fi
transportation than a current car.
Bhe's designed the vehicle from
nhe inside out, with the idea that
[the vehicle has replaced the
family dining table as a place to
converse and interact.
At long last, Lyon, a 1990
[CCS graduate, delivers his ver-
jdict. “It’s spooky,” he says. “In a
Igood way. Do one even more
loutlandish.”
Lyon then moves on to the
(next student, spending the
levening critiquing sketches that
|will be turned into three-dimen
sional clay models for a final
[grade and likely a ticket for a job
Rtis spring when Horozic and 16
[others, including nine from
Michigan, in her class graduate.
Such design reviews are daily
drills at CCS, one of the world’s
top breeding grounds for car
designers, but one that few
Detroiters outside the auto indus
try realize has a global reputation.
“CCS is the nation’s best-kept
secret in design education,” said
CCS dean of academic affairs
Imre Molnar, who moved to CCS
in 2001 from the rival Art Center
College of Design in Pasadena,
Calif., the nation’s other major
school for car designers.
On any given day,
four or five
established designers
will be working here.
— Imre Molnar
CCS dean of academic affairs
CCS’s transportation pro
gram draws students from the
Detroit suburbs as well as from
all over the world, like 25-year-
old Sung-Yeah Song from South
Korea, who picked CCS because
“it’s the best in the world. It’s
famous in Korea.”
Students are a variety of ages,
from 23-year-old senior Nick
Renner from Iowa to adults mak
ing career changes, like Mark
Surel, 33, a DaimlerChrysler
clay modeler who wants to do
his own car designs instead of
create three-dimensional models
of someone else’s designs.
One of the strong points of
the CCS transportation design
program is its close association
with car designers working in
the profession.
“On any given day, four or
five established designers will
be teaching here,” Molnar said.
“In fact, most transportation
design classes are held in the
evenings so we can attract the
best designers to teach.”
Once restricted to mostly GM,
Ford and Chrysler designers,
CCS’s transportation design pro
gram has gone international in its
associations with foreign car
companies and their designers.
Projects like the seniors’
assignment are another boost for
the school. While seniors work
on the GM project, juniors in the
studio next door work on an
assignment to create the next-
generation of open-top vehicles.
The day of the senior critique by
GM, the juniors have just
returned from a field trip to ASC
headquarters in Southgate.
Changes in store for the trans
portation studies program will be
more focused on digital skills used
for rendering concepts, as well as
on conversion of sketches to math-
based djita so models can be made
on high-tech equipment like the
school’s new milling machine.
“We’re trying to stay at least
up to date or ahead of the curve
with the changes in the auto
industry,” Rogers said.
The school also plans to offer
a graduate program in transporta
tion design, a first in the United
States, said Rogers, who says
CCS would then be the only
school in the world to offer trans
portation design at both under
graduate and graduate levels.
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