Studio cities

The time is hard-wired into the schedule of General Motors Advanced Design studios. A must-attend staff meeting.

Every Tuesday at 10am in Detroit, 3pm in the UK and 7am in Los Angeles, a video conference connects two of GM’s advanced studios with their equivalents in Design West, GM’s vast new studio in Warren, near Detroit. There are about 20 people on the call run by Andrew Smith, executive director of GM’s global advanced design teams. Awkwardly, at that time it’s 10pm in China, so the Shanghai studio doesn’t attend and gets its own staff meeting with Smith.

For my fellow Ti contributor Julian Thomson, Design Director at General Motors Europe Advanced Design in Leamington Spa and his senior team, this is their opportunity to explain and review their work with colleagues who are, in a very real sense, also competitors. The regular 60- to 90-minute meetings provide Smith with answers for his similarly weekly meetings with Michael Simcoe, the boss of GM’s circa 2000-strong design department.