A NEW STRATEGIC PIECE OF THE MERCEDES-BENZ GLOBAL NETWORK
As Mercedes-Benz recently announced, it will open a new Advanced Design centre in 2018, which will strengthen even more its global network. The international automobile manufacturer, division of the German company Daimler AG – renowned worldwide for its production of both luxury vehicles and buses, coaches and trucks – has chosen the “French Silicon Valley”, based in Sophia Antipolis, in order to boost its innovative and creative outreach.
THE SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PARK
The Sophia Antipolis Science and Technology Park, in Southern France, on the Côte d’Azur, has in fact no rivals in the country. This innovative territory is an open air start-up and research centre. Created in 1969, this 2400-hectare site hosts today approximately 36 500 employees of more than 2200 international companies such as Thales, Bayer, Amadeus, Huawei and also one of the campuses of the global Business School, SKEMA.
MERCEDES BENZ’S STRATEGY
The new Centre in France will help the brand to spur its pro-active strategy to identify new trends and ideas as well as specialized skills in order to perfect the automotive design methods and procedures of the near future.
A MULTIDISCIPLINARY NEW TEAM
In the Sophia Antipolis beautiful Mediterranean landscape, Mercedes-Benz will set up a multidisciplinary team composed by approximately 50 designers, top experts in their different disciplines (ex.: conventional exterior and interior design, UI/UX and digital design etc.). All together, they will help the brand create the ideal new products, vehicles, designs and trends of the future.
According to the information released by the global automobile manufacturer, the future Advanced Design Centre will be located near Antibes, half-way between Cannes and Nice. The 50-meters long and 20-meters wide clear-cut, cylindrical structure will be a luminous building, made of concrete and glass, immersed in a 3000 square meters area.
As the company already stated, the new centre will be endowed with “flexible working procedures, flat hierarchical decision-making structures” as well as an exceptional international and interdisciplinary network in order for the new team to address in the best possible way all the challenges Mercedes-Benz has to tackle today in the design field.
