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"Daimler-Chrysler's Top Secret Design Lab\nAt a Sprawling Italian Villa, a Team of Designers Is Combining Science with Style to Revolutionize Automotive Interiors\nIn an 18th-century villa on the shores of Italy's Lake Como, specialists at Daimler-Chrysler's interior design lab, known as Advanced Design Italia (ADI), are ushering in the future of Mercedes-Benz interiors.\nA classic Mercedes-Benz 300 SL roadster, parked at ADI's entrance, provides inspiration to passersby.\nDesigners work beneath a ceiling mural bordered by trompe l'oeil moldings.\nVerena Kloos, ADI's managing director, balances utility with luxury. She likens her mission to a shoe designer's: \"Somewhere between a Birkenstock and a Gucci stiletto, there's a beautiful shoe you can walk in.\"\nImages from designers' computers can be transferred to the lab's \"power wall,\" which allows several people in a room to simultaneously view virtual models, such as this prototype for a steering wheel.\nPast and future intersect regularly at ADI, such as when a designer carrying a steering wheel passes a detailed technical drawing of a new Mercedes, displayed on a centuries-old mosaic floor.\nAmong the fruits of ADI's labors is the interior of the Vision GST, marked by handcrafted leather, wood and aluminum. The concept car debuted at the 2002 North American International Auto Show.\nA mural from ADI's ceiling.\nFinishes for various Mercedes exteriors and interiors are applied to disks that designers evaluate side by side, to determine which combinations work best with one another and with interior fabrics.\nA designer models a dashboard out of clay. Though ADI uses the most current high-tech computer design programs, Kloos and her staff have not abandoned older, tried-and-true methods."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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