Sophie Li on Volvo’s new Shanghai studio

Volvo Cars recently revealed its new Shanghai design studio, joining existing spots in Gothenburg and California. While the bricks and mortar outpost itself is new, Shanghai is familiar territory for the design team which has had a presence in the city for more than a decade already.

Now with somewhere to really call home, the team aims to fuse Scandinavian and Asian influences in future designs. Leading the studio will be Sophie Li, who joined Volvo back in January 2022 as head of Asia Pacific Design. Originally brought in by Robin Page, who was replaced earlier this year by incoming head of design Jeremy Offer, Li will lead a sizeable team and sits in an increasingly important market for car design. We caught up with her to see how the new site will work and what it will bring to the table.

How will the Shanghai studio collaborate with other studios? With locations across the globe, it’s almost like “as one studio sleeps, another wakes up”!

Absolutely, that’s what the Design Studio Shanghai really enables for us, a kind of 24-hour design process where ideas can be worked on together when we are online and can be progressed once we’re not online.

We’re able to do this because our studio here in Shanghai has all the functions needed to facilitate the whole design process – from concept to production. It basically mirrors our design headquarters in Gothenburg. Our design team here in Shanghai works together with the rest of the global team on all global projects, and also leads on projects of strategic importance to the region.

I suppose it’s never been a better time to embark on global projects, given the technology at your disposal…

We’re aiming to be at the forefront of digital transformation, which means using the latest technology, tools and digital software. For example, we are able to go into the virtual world, together with our colleagues in Gothenburg and Camarillo, and literally work together in real time on the same project. It makes collaboration so much easier, so much more connected than it ever could be before, and it unleashes our productivity potential.

Thanks to that, all three design studios are able to operate as one design team and deliver highly creative design work that shares our global vision.

Roughly how many designers are working at the Shanghai studio currently?

We’ve had a design team in Shanghai since 2010 and it’s been growing ever since then. Over the years we’ve developed our talent base, improved our competencies, and our team now is made up of people from a really diverse range of backgrounds.

You can really feel that in the energy they bring, they’re so enthusiastic and creative and have made themselves an indispensable part of our global design family. They are continuously delivering outstanding creative design solutions for both global and China projects and are bringing their unique insights and cultural touchpoints to their work.

Are you looking to grow the studio further?

This new design studio enables us to move forward to the next level. We can accommodate more than 100 designers and creative engineers here and now it is an incredibly attractive workplace for more top-notch talents, so yes, we’re always looking to improve and grow. Our Shanghai Design Studio is one of the most comprehensive design studios of global car brands in Asia based on our research, and that alone should excite any design talent looking to work on something exciting.

Will the Shanghai studio help to bring a unique flavour to Volvo designs moving forward?

We’re proud of our unique Scandinavian values and human centric design, that will always be a part of our products going forwards, but one of the reasons we have opened our design studio here is because we have to translate that to our unique audiences in this region. We want to bring Scandinavian premium design closer to more consumers in Asia, and that’s made easier when you understand how consumers live and use their vehicles.

In this way, we can bring the best Scandinavian design heritage, blend it with Asian influence, and create Volvos that our consumers in the region love. Shaping and bringing Volvo Cars’ global design language to life pushes the team to look for inspiration from all corners of the world. In the early phases of a new project, we explore local trends and map cultural nuances across a wide range of markets.

Are there any recent examples of how these two heritages have blended together?

A brilliant example is the new Volvo EX90 Excellence – the top and limited edition of our fully electric flagship EX90 SUV. It is one of the first design projects my team took the lead with and we revealed it last month in Shanghai.

We wanted to highlight its beautiful proportions in a subtle yet confident manner, so we introduced the two-tone colour combination of “Platinum Grey” and “Silver Dawn”, which draws inspiration from Scandinavian nature as well as Chinese art, such as the porcelain glaze and ink-wash. This is what we mean by blending Scandinavian design heritage with East Asian influences.