With one eye on the future and one on the past, Fiat Auto Group invited eight of the world's top car design schools to come up with fresh interpretations of their classic brands. The culmination of the year-long 'Design the Italian Way' competition was overseen by an international selection of judges. Journalists, fashion designers, artists and car designers like Giorgetto Giugiaro and Frank Stephenson (architect of the first BMW MINI and now helming Alfa Romeo's studio) were invited to Turin to dispense their collected wisdom. The ceremony was hosted in the normally secretive surroundings of Fiat's Centro Stile, where the assembled creative minds whittled the 24 winning entries down to a final six. Searching for the students who encapsulated each brand’s intrinsic values wasn’t easy, and Wallpaper* joined the jury to peruse the presentations and models and help make the final selection.
Automotive design students were lured from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, Coventry University of Art and Design, the Design Faculty of Milan Polytechnic, Tokyo Communications Arts, the Stroganov State University in Moscow, Ahmedebad National Institute of Design in India, Sweden’s Umea University Institute of Design and the nearby Istituto Europeo di Design. Charged with re-imagining the Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo of the future, each team set off to distill the essence of each brand.
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