Car Design Cultured
Meet Anna Costamagna, Peugeot Design Manager.
The realm of automotive design seems a faraway place to most. Even those who grow up aspiring to be car designers tend to look at it as a mostly inaccessible, almost magical occupation, and a precarious prospect for a serious career. Consequently, designers tend to cast themselves as outsiders – at least until they themselves make it among these automotive magicians.
Anna Costamagna never was such an outsider. Born in Turin and growing up there, with a mother working as personal assistant to Sergio Pininfarina, Anna experienced early on that it was not some magic potion that was behind fine car designs, but the shedding of blood, sweat, tears, and the appliance of diligent craftsmanship. To others, the Turin of her childhood was the place where car design history was being written. The city of Pininfarina, Bertone, Giugiaro, Michelotti, Fioravanti. To her, it was home.
(photo © Anna Costamagna)
That being said, Anna Costamagna still is an outsider-of-sorts. On the simple basis that she is a woman. In the automotive design industry anno 2020, this still deserves mention. Particularly as she is not part of the colour & trim sector, which has always been a sanctuary for female designers, but works as Interior Design Manager. Her work is not about creating a nice ambience, as is the patriarchal job description for women working in the design sector. Her work is about finding satisfying design solutions and therefore more about ergonomics than dressing. Applied science, rather than decorative art.
At the start of her working life, it was neither science nor the automobile that provided the biggest draw to Anna, but fashion. However, doubts about her own drawing skills eventually led her to abandon this ambition and perform a rather drastic change of course. So she enrolled in Industrial & Management Engineering courses at Politecnico di Torino, Italy’s oldest technical university.
As nobody needs telling, the Italian stance towards design is special indeed. The simplistic explanation that «Italians care a lot about style» does not even begin to describe this country’s unique design culture. For in Italian thinking, the transition from design into style, from function into form is seamless. Whereas in Northern European culture areas, the form follows function mantra results in an inherent antagonism between engineers and designers - as the task of the designer is usually defined as producing nice packaging for engineered functions -, Italian designers used to be engineers themselves. Beauty is therefore a consequence, rather than mere supplement. Beauty is no indulgence. Beauty lends the engineering shape, rather than covering it up. Hence the lack of Italian design schools until relatively recently. Hence Anna’s only superficially peculiar choice to study engineering.
Young Anna with her mother ( photo © Anna Costamagna)
Upon her graduation, Anna chose to apply her set of skills close to home. She did not use her family ties to get a job at Pininfarina’s Cambiano headquarters though, but joined the competition from the other side of town: Bertone in Caprie. By that point, the leading avant-garde carrozzeria’s heyday was already over. Even so, Anna was lucky enough to meet two men there who would become her mentors: Eugenio Pagliano, a car interior design eminence, and David Wilkie, a Scotsman, who is in charge of CNH Industrial’s design today.
« At Bertone, I fell in love with interiors», Anna explains. « What appeals to me is that it’s about creating the best look for functionality. For the one cannot exist without the other. […] Every shutline has a reason to be there, nothing is ever redundant. » It’s precisely this complexity that has sustained Anna’s love for interior design, even as she left Bertone, Turin and Italy behind to join Peugeot in Vélizy some 15 years ago.
The French brand has undergone a remarkable resurgence in recent years. Peugeot’s interiors, which differ significantly from the industry norm, play a subtle, but important role in this success. In a current Peugeot, one can find fabric on the dashboard where the competition usually puts a strip of plastic. The steering wheels are smaller and a lot more octagonal than the norm. And the infotainment screen is flanked by seven fixed oblong buttons on a small tray - presented like keys of a piano. This is no coincidence, but a bit of practical poetry (seven notes - seven buttons) in a context that is defined by the tactile sterility of touchscreens today. Rather than just swiping and prodding a screen, Peugeot drivers access their car infotainment and HVAC system’s main functions by pressing delicately weighted small keys. Which is no reinvention of the wheel, but a welcome additional layer of interaction with a machine that is in danger of offering rather too synthetic a user experience for any emotional attachment to develop.
The seven piano keys (photo © Peugeot)
This is Peugeot’s current solution, of which Anna appears to be rather proud. But as far as UX design is concerned, any solution is but a snapshot. « Technology changes fast, it evolves all the time. That’s what makes it so exciting! » On top of this general excitement comes Peugeot’s own decision to lend every model an interior of its own - in keeping with certain themes and the brand character, but each one altered. Whereas some competitors are satisfied with offering the same design in different sizes, Anna and her colleagues are asked to approach each new model from a fresh perspective: « We have to be more creative, which means a lot of work. But this also gives birth to interiors that are somewhat lyrical, rather than just functional. » Such as interiors with little piano keys.
Language tends to be a decent indicator of one’s mindset. In that sense, many exterior designers’ expressed striving for making cars look cool and awesome is rather telling. Interior designers, on the other hand, tend to be rather more nuanced - Anna being no exception. As she puts it, her engineering degree, coupled with her inherent appreciation of design, results in her using «both the left and right side of brain», which becomes apparent in her choice of words too, charmingly presented with the faintest hint of a Piemontese accent, in a slightly Francophone rhythm.
Peugeot 508 cockpit (photo © Peugeot)
Having talked and listened to Anna for some time, it feels rather inappropriate to bring up the dreaded subject of gender. Yes, she is a woman and that’s still very rare in this industry. This is most decidedly not what defines her or her career. But ignoring this factor wouldn’t merely acknowledge, but silently accept that the car industry still has a lot to learn and change in this regard. « People trust me now. But when you are a woman in car design, you surely have to work harder. »
Anna Costamagna hasn’t spent the last 15 years trying to prove something to others. Instead, she has listened to people’s requirements, thought long and hard of the people who will live in the interiors she helps design. Along the way, there have also been and will always be doubts, she says.
Such humility is not an exclusively female domain, but a rare trait by any account. Quite possibly, it is rather counterproductive to forging a stellar career. Power is not gained this way - only knowledge and competence. Which obviously is to the benefit of the designs Anna Costamagna helps create. Designs that do not benefit from some ‘woman’s touch’, but the intelligence and skills of a woman honouring the proud legacy of her hometown.
