The Committee on Design (COD) of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) met in Detroit, Michigan, April 3-6, 2008, at a conference entitled Design Parallels. Our goal was to illuminate our own design process by studying the methods of automobile designers.

Design is the imagining and facilitation of the creation of a new object or idea. One might expect, then, that automobile designers and architectural designers engage in similar activities. In fact, the process of automobile design described to us in Detroit bears very little resemblance to what we currently respect as architectural design. Four days in Detroit do not make us experts on the automobile design process and maybe we received a false impression. But consistently during this event, we were presented with a very precise definition for “automobile designer.” Ford, GM and the College for Creative Studies (CCS) seemed to agree wholeheartedly that car designers are the people who give cars their appearance, and nothing else. In contrast, most architects would be uncomfortable with the compartmentalization that isolates the car designers from the ergonomic, engineering and fabrication aspects of automobile production. The relationship between our two disciplines is more perpendicular than parallel.

Peter Horbury, the Ford Motor Company Executive Director of Design for the Americas, gave a charming presentation on the inspirational sources of automobile design during the last century. Mr. Horbury mesmerized us with his quick sketches that transformed horses and carriages into automobiles. He presented the theory that new products must remind us of tried and true ones to be palatable. It is a mechanism with which we architects are familiar – plastic laminate that looks like wood and vinyl flooring that looks like stone. In the end, though, Horbury’s understanding of design (at least as described to us in his presentation) is more akin to haute couture than architecture. Asked what his design process was about, he struggled a bit in thought and then joked that it was “about beating the other guy.” It would be interesting to know if victory in this contest is certified by design awards or by the number of vehicles sold. Like a fashion designer and some artists, his focus is on making something new.

Not once during the event did anyone describe interaction between the designers and the rest of the automobile engineering and manufacturing industry. Obviously, Horbury’s work is constrained by these other factors, but the give and take between designer and industry that we cherish in architecture is either absent or not very important. Newness in this extremely constrained universe is a subtle thing. If it can’t be rendered in a large clay model, it does not exist. They have been making these models for 100 years now. Horbury’s success seems more rooted in his ability to recognize designs that will both appeal to the public and survive the extensive corporate vetting process somewhat intact.

Charles Dagit, FAIA, one of the architects present at the meeting, suggested that automobile design is really packaging. Packaging in this case is not so much about enveloping or protecting something. Instead it’s the persuasive embellishments used to convince us to purchase or adopt it. Engineers design the functional aspects of the automobile and make form decisions based on aerodynamics and economy. Decorators, apparently mostly female, do the interior of the automobile. These women are called the “Color and Trim” people. There is a clear boundary that separates engineering from decoration. Mr. Horbury and his colleagues make a clay model of the exterior enclosure, suggesting formal refinements within extremely tight constraints. The purpose of the study and design of this enclosure is solely marketing. The design is the package.

Much building design (is it really architecture?) nowadays is also packaging. The architecture of retail buildings and tall buildings is often primarily about skin and the uniqueness of that skin is primarily about branding. We are much more involved in the specifics of the realization of these skins but at least skin and form are design elements we can appreciate. In automobile design, though, even these are of suspect meaning and value. Which model, which vision, sells the car? Is it the one in the ad, which is so much a function of camera angle, lighting and background music, or the one in the showroom? Which car do we think we own?

At CCS, Dean Imre Molnar explained the education that his institution provides to young designers. He acknowledged the field of architecture as one of many possible sources of inspiration, because architecture is typically performed on a single object. In Mr. Molnar’s mind, that singularity allows more innovation and experimentation than is possible in a field where all design is directed toward an object that must be built millions of times. One aspect of the CCS design studios reinforced this difference. Many of the drawings (beautiful drawings, by the way, both hand and computer, although the homogeneity of style was a little troubling) we saw were on paper with corporate title blocks (Honda, for one). It turns out that many of the design studios are in fact sponsored by automobile manufacturers. This is an acknowledgment of the generic, and simple, character of automobile design. This could not happen in architecture. Our programs are always too complex or too specific or both for there to be any decent cost-benefit ratio in asking 15 students to spend a month or more on a real architecture project.¹

During our visit to CCS, Henry Reeder, FAIA, asked why American car design is so bad. Part of this is a result of the devotion to the clay models. These models never have door handles, windshield wipers, gaskets or other band aid trims that eventually find their way onto the vehicle. After the models and renderings and concept cars, the real things are almost always a disappointment. It may be that the Europeans and Japanese have always been more careful to make sure that the addition of all of this necessary detail is accomplished in ways more consistent with the original design.²

But Mr. Reeder’s question and the confident nodding of heads around the room also revealed a conceit of the architecture profession that hurts us and the perception of our profession in the world. There are good bumpers and bad bumpers, good roofs and bad roofs, good seats and bad chairs, but it is not a question of style! In leisure, there are favorite ball teams and fashionable hemlines. Good taste and bad taste are weekend ideas. As serious architects, we must understand that, like opinions, everybody gets to have their own taste. Picasso respects Wyeth and Mick Jagger respects Pavarotti. We can have our personal preferences but we must know that they are not central to the value that our clients and the public have a right to expect. We may not like them, but Mustangs, Corvettes and yes, even Edsels, testify to the existence of a strong American automobile design culture (as far as it goes).

Our important task as architects is to guide the creation of environments, buildings and spaces that work – in an artful way. Architects whose goal is to make the world safe for modernism know deep in their souls that it really isn’t very important. The resulting insecurity necessitates their scorn for other taste cultures. I think Peter Horbury revealed a similar insecurity when he bitterly described the design of the Prius as intentionally ugly. He claimed that Prius owners knew they were taking good medicine and thus enjoyed the bad taste of Prius’ appearance. Thinking we know better about something like style, thinking there is a right answer about taste, isolates us from the great majority of Americans. Automobile design may never be about anything other than style and taste. Architecture has much more important concerns.

At the GM Tech Center, we were welcomed by Edward Wellburn, Vice President of Global Design, General Motors Corporation. We learned that the designer’s place here is peripheral. There is a story about Henry Ford saying that you can have a car in any color you like, as long as it’s black. Ford and the automobile industry decided to sacrifice “having it your way” in order to achieve the economic benefits of mass production³. That made it possible for almost everyone in the U.S. to have a car. There is a measurable right answer about most of the ergonomic, aerodynamic, and power train aspects of an automobile⁴. But the American marketplace demands the appearance of choice. Though most aspects of every car must stick as closely as possible to the “right answer,” the appearance is used to differentiate models in hopes of commanding a larger share of the market. All designs are possible so long as they don’t violate any of the right answers.

The layout of the GM Tech Center, an icon of modern architecture by Eero Saarinen, is profoundly symbolic on this subject. There is a Design building at one end of the lake and a Research building at the other end. In architecture, we have been weak on the subject of research, but we seem to be getting better. The Latrobe Prize awarded by the AIA College of Fellows and the work of Kieran Timberlake both testify to this improvement. In the automobile industry, they have always understood the importance of research, but this research only informs design in the most indirect ways. Engineers and scientists actually design the car and the designer’s only job is to give it a look. Actually, though, the designer’s position is even more peripheral than that. The designers create possibilities. The corporate executives, and their marketing experts, in the end, select the look that we finally purchase.

Towards the end of the event, we toured the Cranbrook Academy of Art with its Director, Reed Kroloff. The contrast between the role of the architect and that of the car designer was starkly rendered here. Eliel Saarinen and his family had their hands in and on the design and fabrication of every aspect of this bucolic, man-made environment. Eero Saarinen, the most famous member of that family, exemplified a design process diametrically different from that of the car designers. In the end, like all palpable objects, Saarinen’s buildings necessarily have an appearance, and not an unconsidered one; but, in Eero Saarinen’s work, architecture and design (not just form) interact with (not just follow) function.

During one of our bus rides, we were treated to recordings of great architects. We heard Mies say that he was much more interested in getting it right than making it beautiful. That clarified the biggest lesson of this conference. The difference between car designers and architects is that car designers are trying to make something new and different, while architects are trying to make something right.

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¹On the other hand, this does seem like a possible source of funding for schools of architecture. Why couldn’t Knoll or Lightolier, for example, sponsor design studios?

²The GM Tech Center suffers a similar fate. The clean lines of the flat roofs are dominated in real life by hundreds of mechanical protrusions. In fact, Saarinen’s buildings here look crenellated. It is just like the difference between the car in the ad and the car in the show room. Which is more real, more important, the building or the photograph?

³While visiting Edsel and Eleanor Ford’s home in Grosse Pointe, we encountered an intriguing and refreshing object. In their garage was a car that had been designed and built just once, specifically for Mrs. Ford. Imagine someone being able to take charge of this huge apparatus and harness it to the creation of a single object!

⁴These right answers are also unswervingly constrained by the costs of production. Unlike so much of architecture which is only built once, when you do something a million times, you can accurately determine the cost.

Mike Mense, FAIA, is the principal of mmenseArchitects (www.mmense.com) in Anchorage Alaska, a 30 year old multidisciplinary design firm. He is currently a member of the Advisory Group of the AIA Committee on Design (COD) and is their communications coordinator. This article would not have been possible without the efforts of Rae Dumke, Hon. AIA, Executive Director of AIA Michigan and AIA Detroit, Alan Cobb, FAIA, past president of AIA Detroit, John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press and, most especially, Carol Rusche Bentel, FAIA, current Chair of the Committee on Design.