Automotive design holds a very special place within the world of design and within my heart, even if drawing cars was never my strength. It is one of the most desired roles a designer can aspire to. But it also comes with immense responsibility. Cars are not just objects. They shape culture, dreams, and collective imagination. My own passion for design began with a car wheel, one that I learned to draw as a child from my father. That simple exercise opened a long and winding path into creativity. Even so, I am not a car designer. And after the age of 15, I never dreamed of becoming one. And yet, a few days ago, I found myself sitting down for a quite 20-minute conversation over a coffee with one of the most influential automotive designers in Europe. For those of you who may not recognize his name immediately, I'll just say one word, Ferrari. Flavio Manzoni has been chief design officer at Ferrari since 2010. He came to Cluj in Romania at the invitation of Ciprian Mijna, the head of the design department of the University of Arts and Design Kapoka, where he received the title of Dr. Honoris Kawoza. The evening before this interview he also had a public conference in front of more than 300 students and faculty members sharing his perspective on design, creativity and responsibility. What struck me most though was not his title or his reputation, but the person in front of me. Calm, thoughtful, deeply passionate about the design and genuinely interested in how people learn, think, and create. Our conversation unfolded naturally in English, and I chose to keep it exactly as it happened. Two people speaking freely without scripts, without translation. Of course, subtitles in Romanian are available for those who prefer them. We didn't talk about numbers or achievements. We talked about design as a way of understanding the world, about education as a place where imagination and discipline must meet. About drawing by hand, humility and the responsibility designers carry when they shape objects that influence culture and everyday life. This video captures a small fragment of that conversation, a dialogue between two people who care deeply about design and about the role it plays in education, culture, and everyday life. My name is Mihnea Gâldău. I am the founder of Designer, the platform dedicated to promoting Romanian design and a professor at Declnapoka. And today we are watching the interview with Flavio Manzoni and design.
I think this is the perfect setup. So we're talking with Flavio Manzoni from Italy. We're having a coffee and Italian coffee. It's not Italian.
Italian coffee. Espresso.
It's espresso. You also had a cappuccino. You had an espresso and the cappuccino.
Because I love cappuccino but also I need an extra boost with espresso today after the honoris causa, you know.
I was wondering if this is a habit, an Italian habit to have two coffees.
But I know there's something you're not allowed to drink cappuccino after lunch, right?
True. This is a very strange habit of tourists, you know. Normally, you don't have to drink too much milk with a heavy meal, you know. Better not to mix for digestion. And also coffee is not good maybe in the night.
You had a long day yesterday. You received the Dr. Honoris Koza, you came from Italy, and then you also had the conference.
Can you tell us why you are here? How did this happen?
I think by destiny because three years ago I held a conference in Florence in the university where I got the degree in architecture.
And it was a conference about design and car design. But you know when I talk about design I talk about everything because for me everything is art. And then by chance I met Ciprian Mijna, the great professor university. He was there by chance and he listened to my conference and they decided to invite me to Romania.
And you accepted it. It is not so usual that you meet such an important person in the conference and then she answers you and then she also comes to you. You are a very warm person as well.
Well, important person. I'm a worker, you know. I'm a designer. I love creating things. I don't like at all people that are not modest. And for me modesty is a quality, especially because when you realize that perfection is something that you never reach. You always work towards it. You have to be humble always. And especially in this era which is so difficult. Probably in the 60s and the 70s you could create everything because everything was new. Now everything has been done so it's not so easy to innovate.
My teacher used to say the same when I was learning to be a designer.
Yeah. I've been talking with many masters of design of the 60s and 70s. For example, I met Castiglioni, Achille Castiglioni, during a couple of lessons in Florence many years ago. But also Mario Bellini who came to the Ferrari design center. He came visiting the design center and meeting my team. It was fantastic. He's 85 I think but he's still working.
He's still working. He has done so many masterpieces that you have to say okay.
And I asked him, can you please tell me how was being a designer at that time? And he said totally different. And they said probably I could not work right now on projects like in the past because in the past everything had to be created. And design was connected to innovation, to newness.
Yeah. New technologies, new aspirations, a new world that was really projected to the future after the Second World War.
And now it's different and everything is complicated and complex. And moreover, there is another problem. There is too much, there is a kind of nostalgic tendency to the past that doesn't help innovation and creativity. And by the way, I asked Mario Bellini, but how was at the time? And he said, we talking about the masters of design like Bellini, Castiglioni, Zanuso, Munari, all these people, they didn't think about the past. They just wanted to create the icons of the future, the new paradigms.
But you learn about the past because you want to learn from the past.
Ah yeah, the past is an incredible lesson, but you don't want to rebuild it. You want to learn and move forward. But what is important is to catch the spirit of another period where maybe there were better conditions to create. For instance, just a few days ago, I invited a very important designer of Pininfarina, Diego Tina, who was one of the most important designers and he worked 40 years in Pininfarina. He came, now he's almost 80 I think, and we were asking many questions about the past. So how for example he designed the Testarossa in 1984.
And he said, 'We just wanted to make something new, completely new.' And we asked him, 'But why did you call it Testarossa?' Well, we didn't know the name at the time. But even if we didn't want to make a modern interpretation of the old Testarossa of 1957.
The approach was let's do something new and modern. If you do this now, average people complain. Not everybody is really open to accept a certain type of innovation.
We call it MAYA, right? The most advanced yet acceptable principle.
When we design something, we have to see what the people really can accept.
But the public was more open in the 60s and 70s because they were open to newness, right?
Okay. But I remember because I'm almost 60, 61. So I remember when I was a young kid.
Every time there was a new product in every field, in interior design, product design, car design or whatever, it was like magic for me. It was enthusiasm. 'Oh my god, what is this? This is impressive. How can a man create something like that which is totally a breakthrough, a kind of disruptive object.'
But we see your work and we think the same. How can a man, how can a team design something so beautiful like a Ferrari? So this still exists I think. What are you enthusiastic about today? What makes you?
I'm enthusiastic about the fact that we can explore. Ferrari is not a brand that works on design criteria. So they define design criteria and they spread them out on several models. So more or less the recipe is the same.
At Ferrari, this doesn't happen because also historically, every time you have to design a new Ferrari, you have to think about the originality or the technology and the technical aspects of the project. So the form of that car should be consistent with that. So you cannot simply repeat features or whatever because you have to think what's the best shape for that project. For example, I mentioned the Testarossa of 1984.
Nobody knows why there were some ribs. You remember the ribs on the body side?
The car at the beginning didn't have the ribs. They just had a big air intake. We call it naca air intake. They discovered it was dangerous and not possible to mold that big air intake because it's dangerous for boys, for babies.
Okay. So they had to put some ribs in order to guarantee a kind of consistent surface but still having the air intake. So just to tell you how every single element of a Ferrari has a functional purpose or something which is dictated by the performance. So the form should be, it's so difficult to explain it, but should somehow become natural step by step after understanding all the technical principles of a new car. For example, if we are talking about a hybrid Ferrari.
Technical constraints are totally different from another type of Ferrari. So you have to follow that and assimilate that and step by step the form should be something that grows.
