From the official Press Release:

Two years after the inauguration of its Automotive Design Network (ADN) Centre in October 2004, PSA Peugeot Citroën has decided to further stimulate creativity by establishing two competing teams of stylists for each of its Peugeot and Citroën marques.

For each new project for either marque, two different design studios with smaller creative teams will be asked to come up with strong, innovative and highly distinctive styling designs. The head of each studio will report directly to the marque’s styling manager, who will foster the competitive spirit while ensuring that the marque’s values and DNA are retained.

Introducing this element of competition within the ADN will build on the quality of the work produced by PSA Peugeot Citroën’s in-house studios, which have proved their individual strengths by winning almost all of the last 20 creative briefs against outside competition. Two separate and competing studios within each of the Peugeot and Citroën styling teams will further enhance this creative strength, whilst the Group will also continue to leverage the skills of outside design studios.

The highly modular ADN building, designed by architect Jacques Ripault, made it easy to create four design studios of equal size and brightness to accommodate the new teams without extending the building or taking on more employees.

The ADN was built in 2004 to bring PSA Peugeot Citroën’s styling and engineering teams together under one roof, with all the resources needed for their respective tasks.

Overall efficiency improved immediately; 25 projects were undertaken in 2005 compared with 17 in 2004.

Today, over a thousand people from 21 different countries work in this leading-edge, 70,000m2 design centre, located on the outskirts of Paris.

(cover image: the latest concept vehicles created by PSA Group: the Citroen C-Metisse and the Peugeot 908 RC)

(Source: PSA )