“This is the most creative place I’ve ever worked,” says Saad Metz, Audi AG’s head of research and development in Beijing, looking out of his ceiling-to-floor window at a landscape of metal pipes and old factories. “Here we get inspired by artists every day.”
The German automaker set up its China design center in Beijing’s 798 art district, a sprawl of old military electronics facilities taken over in the early 2000s by the capital’s booming contemporary art scene and now being invaded by design companies and entrepreneurs.
