About

I am a car designer and design director. I was born and raised in Germany and have lived and worked in Europe, North America and Asia.

I started at Mercedes-Benz in 1997 with a master's thesis on a Maybach exterior concept. At IVM Automotive I worked for GM and Opel under Hans Seer and Martin Smith, as designer, project manager and chief designer. At Mitsubishi Motors in Los Angeles I worked under Olivier Boulay and Nakanishi-san and became Manager Design. At Technicon Design I built the Shanghai studio and later ran studio services across three continents. Since 2019 I have been a design director in China, first at Dongfeng Liuzhou, then at Great Wall, and since 2021 at Dongfeng Motor in Wuhan.

At Technicon I was General Manager of the Shanghai studio, responsible for strategy, sales and hiring, and built the team from zero to 35. I also run CADRE, my own design consultancy in California. Through it I was design director for BAIC Yinxiang and worked on an Isuzu truck programme.

Alongside studio work I taught for fifteen years, at Academy of Art University in San Francisco and at California State University, Long Beach. See Teaching.

I hold an MFA from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover and studied industrial design for a semester at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

German is my first language and I work in English. I hold a German passport and a US green card.

Email

hhklb@icloud.com

Phone

On request

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/henningknoepfle