Born in 1991 in Avignon, France, Arthur Coudert is a young and vivacious designer. Fortunate enough to get an internship at Dassault Systemes and Nissan Design Europe while still a student at Strate College in Paris, he has been working as an interior designer at Mercedes-Benz’s Advanced Design studio in Como, Italy, since he graduated last May. We caught up with the young designer to find out how he got there.
When did you know you wanted to be a designer?
“My parents told me that I was eight years old when I said for the first time that I wanted to be a car designer. I dreamt about it like children dream about being an astronaut or a Formula One pilot.
“My dad is really into classic cars, so I grew up surrounded by old Alpines and Datsuns. I’ve always been fascinated by the pure shapes of these cars, I’ve always seen them as a piece of art, as moving sculpture. I was just interested in the pure aesthetic of cars as a child. I guess one day these two passions — drawing and cars — met.”
Did you study vehicle/transportation design directly?
“I came to Strate College right after high school, but the two first years at Strate are focused on fine art and global knowledge in design, so I studied product design, transportation design, packaging design, and interaction design. The curriculum in transportation design starts in the third year. So I can’t really say that I studied transportation directly.”
Your work spans both interior and exteriors. Do you prefer working on interior or exterior design?
“That’s a really hard question for me, I did an internship in exterior design [at Nissan] and one in interior [Mercedes-Benz]. I love them both and I wish I could do both in the future.
“It’s hard to compare because it’s really different. My process to create interiors and exteriors are completely different, even the way I draw is different from one to the other.
“For me exterior design is spontaneous, more artistic. As an exterior designer I feel like an artist sculpting, looking for the most iconic shape. It becomes a bit of an obsession, when I’m working on an exterior I can’t think about anything else until I come out with the sketch that makes me think ‘this is the one!’
“Interior design is totally different; it’s closer to product design. When you’re designing an interior you can really think about how the user will drive the car, how you can make him/her feel good inside the car, how you can add pleasure to driving and how you can transform what we all know about driving into a completely new experience.
“Even style-wise it has nothing to do with exterior design. You need to find a global theme for the interior and after that most of the time it’s about designing every piece of the interior to make them fit with this global theme. It’s about finding a way to make everything fit together to end up with a really homogenous interior.
It’s obvious you are a very talented designer. When did you start to draw?
“Thank you very much!
“Honestly I can’t remember when I started to draw. I drew when I was a child like most children do, but I think I really began addicted to it when I started to study traditional drawing and painting at seven or eight years old. I studied it for about 10 years. It was the perfect way for me to learn perspective, anatomy, using every traditional medium from pencil to oil painting.”
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us Arthur! We wish you all the success in your career…
