Patrick le Quément keynote speaker

Patrick le Quément is a retired French designer who graduated in Product Design at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design in Great Britain where he holds a Doctor of the University status. His career was spent entirely in the automobile industry, first in Ford where he reached the position of Director of Design in Germany, and later in the Volkswagen-Audi Group where he held the position of Director of Advanced Design.

He joined Renault as a Vice President of Design in 1987 and was named in 1995 Senior Vice President of both Design and Group Quality, reporting directly to the President Louis Schweitzer. Patrick le Quément has received numerous prizes; he was elected 6 times European Designer of the Year in several countries, as well as European Designer of the Year by his peers in 2002.

That same year he received the coveted Lucky Strike Award from the Raymond Loewy Foundation in recognition to his contribution to design. Since early 2010, whilst remaining a design auditor for both Renault and Nissan, he has persued a new career as a naval designer. His first 2 boats, the Outremer 5X catamaran and the Garcia GT54 trawler have both been named European Boats of the Year 2013. In early 2013, he has co-founded together with Maurille Larivière, a designer and a well known figure in the field of design education, being a former co-founder of Strate College, as well as Marc Van Petegem, the world famous naval architect, a new design school based in Nice on the French Riviera. Known as «The Sustainable Design School» which defends the power of innovation for human solutions.

During his career he worked for: Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen-Audi, Renault.