Prestigious designers from the fields of architecture, fashion, industry, advertising, communication, art and photography, as well as numerous specialised communication media, rendezvoused today at the Seat Design Center (SDC), the Spanish car manufacturer’s new global design center.

These renowned designers thus act as ‘godfathers’ to this modern innovation complex, located at SEAT’s Technical Center in Martorell.  The more than 130 attendees include such important names at Tiago Correira from Zaha Hadid Architects, authoress of the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio as well as the Phäno Science Center in Germany; other names are Simone Schedoni, president of the Italian Schedoni leather firm, or else Phillippe Graton, photographer and author of the Michel Vaillant comic strip series. 

Trend-setting names in the field of design, sources which are ‘sipped at’ by Seat designers also when turning on the ideas tap, emulating a process of osmosis in which creativity is nourished by spheres of influence other than the world of the car.  In the words of Luc Donckerwolke, SEAT’s Director of Design and the creative mind behind the building, this desire of the company to encourage design and innovation is prompted by “the brand’s will to absorb and broadcast creativity as a life-style, so that our models are icons of the cutting edge and trend-setters”.  

This overarching aim is brought closer thanks to the concept of the new building itself, which searches after visual interconnectedness between all areas, so that direct visual oversight of the different development stages of a prototype is possible, enabling optimal monitoring of the design and production process.  In an informal and relaxed atmosphere, attendees were able to stroll around the Seat Design Center’s facilities, and also leave their “mark” on the building thanks to an enormous steel mural provided for that purpose, and on which they let loose their imagination.  

The Seat Design Center’s 5,600 m² of floor space can accommodate over a hundred highly qualified engineers, designers and modellers, enabling the company to better harness synergies in the sphere of Research and Development (R&D), so as to raise the profile of design, one of the main distinguishing features of the Spanish car manufacturer’s models.