CzechDesign.cz

Klára John – 24.08.2004

Success with automobiles and beautiful shapes Pinifarina is the Design Team of the Year 2004.

The red dot design award is one of the oldest and most sought-after design competitions world-wide. Since 1955, outstanding design quality has been annually selected and officially honored in an exhibition by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen.

The Jury is the heart of the red dot design award, because it guarantees the objectivity and fairness, which gives the competition its world-wide significance. The 24 jurors from nine countries are internationally acknowledged design experts.

The Italian design company Pinifarina, which has above all become famous for its automobile designs for manufacturers such as Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, or Peugeot, received the "red dot design team of the year" award. With this award, the red dot jury honors Pinifarina´s merits as a forerunner of automobile design as well as the design company’s innovative power and its entrepreneurial spirit. Sergio Pininfarina (77), the company’s president, received the award at the "red dot award: product design " festive presentation of prizes in the Essen Aalto Theatre.

The competition’s initiator, Professor Peter Zec explains the company’s selection as design team of the year: "This continuous success story lasting for many decades is unprecedented in the design world. The exceptional quality of Pininfarina predominantly results from the fact that its presidents have, at an early stage, understood and managed design as a professional business. Due to the combination of construction and aesthetics, Pininfarina consistently manages to set industry standards and simultaneously integrate economic plausibility into its work."

Pininfarina is an exceptional company in many respects. Founded almost 75 years ago as small elitist body shop, the design company has remained in family hands until today and is now more successful than ever before. Under the management of Sergio Pininfarina, the founder’s son, Pininfarina developed into an international business group, which has been traded at the stock market since 1986 and is capable of flexibly co-operating with the automobile industry in a variety of fields.

The models of the traditional Turin family business are characterized by consistent high-quality design over the years. This is even more remarkable, since Pininfarina has been and still is working as an independent design company for different international automobile manufacturers. The company’s history includes works for Lancia, Fiat, Nash, Ferrari, Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, General Motors, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Honda, Hyundai, Hafei, Mitsubishi and Daewoo. Furthermore, the company has created designs for utility vehicles, airplanes, yachts, furniture, and accessories.

On 5th July 2004, Sergio Pininfarina traveled to Essen to receive the "Radius" touring cup as a symbol of the award on behalf of the whole design team. The Radius was handed over by the previous Year’s winner, the Nokia design team.

The documentation of the competition, the "Design Innovations Yearbook 2004" was published on 5^th July 2004.

Translator: Klára John