BMW Expected to Name New Design Studio President

It was to have been a big week at Designworks/USA, BMW’s international design studio in Ventura County.

The company is scheduled to announce Thursday that Adrian van Hooydonk has been named president, after having planned to couple the announcement with an open house to celebrate a major expansion of its facility in Newbury Park.

Last week’s terrorist attacks on the East Coast, however, led to postponement of the open house until January. Then Van Hooydonk, first stranded in Munich, Germany, by last week’s air traffic shutdown, was kept in Europe this week by the death of his father.

The 37-year-old designer, a native of the Netherlands, joined BMW in 1992 and had been director of automotive design at Designworks since 1999. He replaces Henrik Fisker, who left BMW last month to become London-based chief designer for Ford Motor Co.’s Premier Automotive Group.

Van Hooydonk, a graduate of Delft Polytechnic in the Netherlands and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, also has worked as a freelance product designer in his native country and in Italy.

Working at BMW in Munich and at Designworks, Van Hooydonk has been exterior designer of the 7-Series sedan and a new car to be introduced next year. He also did the exterior design of the Mini concept.