Heather left Detroit on Monday, so I had to go to a lot of parties by myself. The first party was held by Michelin in a restauarant at GM head quarters.
GM is located next to the auto show and is a huge buliding. The scale inside is absolutely amazing, you have a feeling of being inside the Death Star from StarWars, huge concrete pillars, glass walk ways, you get the idea.
Held at a swanky restaurant the Michelin reception gave us (the contestants) the opportunity to mingle with design chiefs, and people from the press, mostly auto-press, while trying to eat some expensive food.
Through my friend Ty, I heard of another party going on, called the Designers Party. I had no invitation there but I gave it a go.
All I knew it was going down at a private art studio hosted by some super rich car designer, and that every car designer would be there. And they were. All 3000 sq feet were packed with automotive designers and some spouses, Amazingly, on every wall I saw big paintings of fast cars, there was free food, chefs, bars, and models walking around in skimpy dresses the host designed. The host was apparently quite a hotshot.
Beyond the main room there was several big back rooms stacked with more paintings and parked Ferraris and Ford GT40. Again a great opportunity to meet and mingle, which I did of course.
Tuesday started too early after such a late party.
It turns out apparently that Michelin and Center for Creative Studies, a design school in Detroit (CCS), cooperate on this competition, as the graduating class competes for the three top places in the competition.
My day started at the Michelin area with a press conference so I spent quite some time taking with reporters from various outlets. My last camera interview went on for more than 30 minutes, so I was pretty toast after that.
As the Michelin press conference winded down I noticed "Eye On Design Detroit" was about to begin, which is a best-in-show awards ceremony. I stood watching as the judges walked on stage, these were design chiefs from GM, Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Harley Davidson CEO, Kia, BMW, head of designs etc, about 20 people in all. They gave awards to the best production car, truck, and best concept car and truck 4 in all. To my amazement, my friend Ty's car won best concept truck! Quite an achievement!
A few hours later I went on a private tour of the design school in Detroit called Center for Creative Studies, CCS. Which turned out to be a pretty nice place, and the level of work is quite high too, I'm glad to have seen it.
Tonight I had dinner with a group of people (alumni) from the school in San Francisco who now work in the auto industry in Detroit. The director there, Tom, invites them to dinner when he is in town for the auto show every year.
So it has been a pretty good week so far, I have been busy and my feet hurt, but well worth it!
I have also taken a few pictures, but I have no cable to hook up the camera, check out these links instead:
http://jalopnik.com/photogallery/mdesignchal/1000497851
http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-detroit-michelin-challenge-design/586626/full/
2 comments:
Quote: "My last camera interview went on for more than 30 minutes, so I was pretty toast after that".
What, and how come, please explain...
I think he meant that he was tired after explaining every detail of his work for a long time. :) But I think he enjoyed the experience anyway...
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