Studio Visit: Nissan Design America

A tiny toy helicopter hangs from the ceiling of David Woodhouse’s office. “Do you know what this is?” he asks, reaching up and gently taking hold of the bright yellow gyrocopter with black-and-white striped tail. “That’s Little Nellie, from the James Bond movie. When I’m here, I feel like I’m on the set of You Only Live Twice.” Woodhouse lets go and we watch for a moment as the little model, complete with machine guns and flamethrowers, swings back and forth from its long wire.

Nissan Design America (NDA), nestled in the San Diego enclave of La Jolla, indeed looks like a secret lair from a spy movie. Its concrete walls, high ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling glass were designed by Ken Ronchetti, a tradesman-cum-industrial designer who worked for Caterpillar and later designed residential and commercial structures around Southern California, included Nissan’s 60,000 square-foot campus completed in 1983 (although the studio was founded four years earlier). Woodhouse has helmed the studio since 2019 after leaving his former position as design director of Lincoln Motor Company.

On these grounds, designers help to create vehicles with an emphasis on the Americas region in close collaboration with the global design centre in Atsugi and Nissan Technical Centres in Japan and North America. These include, among others, the 300ZX, Pathfinder, Hardbody pickup, and several generations of Z cars. The studio also did early development work on the GT-R and, more recently, were heavily involved in the latest-generation Pathfinder SUV.

Numerous designers have found inspiration at NDA. Not only Woodhouse, but also Alfonso Albaisa, Nissan’s current senior vice president of global design. “When I joined NDI (Nissan Design International, Inc. – as called at the beginning), to be honest not fully aware of the importance of decisions that created this wonderful place,” Albaisa remembers. “For Nissan, seeing our portfolio and seeing the U.S. market, the decision to open design and engineering centres thousands of miles away in the United States to reflect the dreams of real American people and their real American lives was huge. In reality this cultural curiosity has had such an impact on automobile design with now upwards of 20 studios in California.”

The SoCal studio is a bubble within a bubble, flanked by the University of California San Diego’s academic and medical buildings, and a short drive from the shoreline, where shaggy haired surfers clamber down rocky slopes to catch a wave while the rest of the world is at work. The multi-building complex is the West Coast base for both Nissan and Infiniti design activities, with thoughtful touches that help spur inspiration and productivity. The exterior design studio is separated from the clay modeling studio by glass walls so designers can see their creations being milled and refined. Much of the furniture and interior décor were designed in-house, and some even handmade by NDA designers. Other areas include interior design space, colour and trim studio, and digital design and realisation rooms. The facility has undergone major renovations in 2005 and again in 2015. “The surprising thing to me is how relevant the building stays, the dynamic of the building, the modernism of it and what we call the J-DNA influence that’s really important to me,” Woodhouse says.

As many in the industry know, there would be no NDA without the late Jerry Hirshberg. A man of many talents, which included music and painting, Hirshberg founded NDA in 1979 after being recruited by Nissan from General Motors, where he penned many designs including the 1971 “boat tail” Buick Riviera.

“For our specific culture, Nissan hiring Jerry Hirshberg was huge,” Albaisa says. “Yes, an established and successful studio chief in GM’s Buick Studio, but he was a lover of the wider spectrum of design including product, graphic design, and architecture and equally his love of fine art. This wider view of design influenced our automotive design and culture immensely by diffusing the ‘auto-specific’ tendency in our business.”

Albaisa says Hirshberg refused to create the studio in Los Angeles because he felt the team needed separation from automotive culture. “He pushed to select his own architect and insisted that the atmosphere was open, a bit Zen and very modern – and by the way, you can design a car there,” he explains. “At the end of the day, he was not interested in cars, he was obsessed with creating inspired objects, whatever it is. Really, really obsessed.”

Albaisa remembers the California studio as a place where there was little separation between work and personal life – in a good way. “Basically, we lived in a design commune. We worked on cars, boats, buildings, planes, golf clubs, computers and children’s toys. Together we went to museums, movies, and events. Basically, we were a family of individuals. The rebel culture was tangible and wonderful.”

Today, much of that spirit lives on. A well-equipped workshop, when not being used for business purposes, offers employees the space and tools to fix their bicycles or work on other personal projects. The paint shop, with a 5-axis spraying machine that Woodhouse believes to be the largest in any design studio on the West Coast, allows designers to impeccably finish their models, or, in Woodhouse’s case, a personal race car at his own expense. A gym and separate yoga studio (in non-COVID times) offer a healthy respite between deadlines and design reviews. Outside, there’s plenty of space to see models in the golden sunlight, as well as a tennis court and a (currently abandoned) beach volleyball court. Overhead, the boom of fighter jets from nearby Miramar Marine Corps Air Station can be heard from time to time, evoking images more akin to Top Gun than James Bond. With California now lifting many of its COVID restrictions, the team has begun working again in the studio and has moved to a more hybrid style of work, which Woodhouse calls “the best of both worlds.”

Incidentally, the studio was also the site of a magnificent coral tree, planted when the building was constructed nearly 40 years ago. A centrepiece of the studio’s outdoor area, the tree could be seen from Hirshberg’s, – now Woodhouse’s – office. Not many months after Woodhouse took the reins at NDA, the tree mysteriously split and toppled over. “It was the strangest thing,” Woodhouse says, pointing to the spot where the tree once stood.

“We saw it on the security cameras. All of a sudden, you see it just crack and go down. Nobody was around.” Soon after, Hirshberg, long since retired, died from a rare form of cancer. In honour of the tree and the man who watched it grow, Woodhouse had a new coral tree planted in the same spot and plans to hold a memorial for Hirshberg, once COVID restrictions are lifted. In this way, the memory of both will continue to inspire future generations of designers, the sort of spiritual equivalent of James Bond telling Ernst Stavro Blofeld: “This is my second life.”

When Woodhouse is asked how he’d sum up nearly two years at NDA, he’s unequivocal. “I have known a lot of studios, and I believe NDA San Diego is the best in the world. I feel super lucky.”