Audi's chief designer Stefan Sielaff has been named head of Volkswagen Design Centre in Potsdam. He will also assume responsibility as head of interior design at the VW Group as part of his new role, reporting to VW Group design chief Walter de Silva in both instances.
He started his design career at VW Group in 1990, taking on various roles before moving to DaimlerChrysler in 2003, where he stayed for three years. He will switch to Potsdam on 1 February 2012.
Sielaff has been in charge of Audi design since 2006. He is responsible for much of the current range of cars, including some of the more recent additions to the line-up, the A1, A7 and Q3. Sielaff is also credited with developing Audi's signature LED light design and its single frame grille, hallmarks of every model in the Audi line-up.
Sielaff told Autocar as recently as last month about his desire to overhaul the styling of Audi's future models. Under the acronym ‘AQR’, where A stands for Audi (saloons and hatches) Q for Quattro (SUV models) and R for sports cars, Sielaff’s team are specifiying new design values, like the slope-back angle for the grille on the three types of models, headlamp shape and body surfacing.
“We know that some people think our saloons look too alike and are well into a project to change that,” he said. “We will mainly do that with the proportions of those cars”.
Sielaff has also been working on an interior design revolution at Audi, starting with next year's all-new A3. The interior of that car is set to be unveiled at the CES show in Las Vegas next month.
Audi is yet to name Sielaff's successor.
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