It’s a special day, after the turbulent thunderstorm that announced the autumn equinox, today, 23rd September, the intense sun rays are warm. As the photographer says: it seems like people are drawn by the light. This is the perfect day to meet the master of Italian design: Marcello Gandini.

Marcello Gandini was asked everything, through countless interviews, both written and filmed. In 2016, Sen Gautam published a book in two volumes “Marcello Gandini. Maestro of Design” (Link: https://www.gilena.it/libri/marcello-gandini-maestro-of-design-regular-edition ); eight hundred pages to describe his career, with numerous images and a hundred designs by his own hand. In 2019, an exhibition organised by Mauto in Turin, “Marcello Gandini. Genio nascosto.”
Do you think there is anything which was missed in the uncountable questions?
After listening to the interviews and reading the articles, I decided not to bore him with the usual questions: how was the Lamborghini Miura born? I chose to savour this chance: meeting my idol.

You cannot dominate your emotions in situations like these. You only need to ask the first question to break the ice though and subjection played a trick…

– His father was an orchestra composer and director, so I thought you had a musical imprinting. I have a view, which is part of the myth, I imagine you in your ‘frontistirio’ drawing, with Wagner’s music in the background. Your pencil flowing confidently on the sheet, at the rhythm of Ride of the Valkyries and… you tracing the Stratòs Zero.

– My father was a musician, until he had four children. Music was his life, he was also the orchestra director of Turin’s Regio’s orchestra, before it burned down. His father, my grandfather, forced him to get a couple of degrees as well as a conservatory diploma, you never know in life. He graduated in pharmacy and law. After the birth of five children, he chose to work as a pharmacist.

– Do you listen to music while you work?

I’m not so fond of music. It could be but, in truth, I attended the Salesians boarding school until the age of eight… As I was the son of a musician, when I was 4, they put me on the piano. In the afternoon, when the others played or during break time, I had to study music. I couldn’t play football, but I took lessons from a piano teacher. That was the way to make me hate the piano, they were years of suffering. I don’t actually need music while working, silence is a beautiful thing.

Silence! Sherlock Holmes would have gathered it already on the street that guided us to the entry gate to the former abbey. All you needed to do was observing the position, distant from the racket of the city. We’re at the feet of mount Musinè, considered the place of mystery, where imagination and magic are combined and confused for one another. Countless myths, legends and stories of UFO’s sightings, which made this area a privileged destination amongst the fans of paranormal phenomena. The house is surrounded by a luxuriant park, which is meticulously cared for and where silence is interrupted solely by the rustling of leaves, the tweeting of the birds and the bray of a donkey.

After a brief pause, Marcello Gandini talks to us about the expressive potential created by the lack of noise.

Silence has an incredible strength also when doing down-to-earth things, such as drawing a car. Silence is something which involves a bit of everything. It’s a way of thinking, behaving, focusing, you put yourself in a peculiar attitude towards the world, so that you get some ideas out.

This former abbey also is a proper place of silence. The heart of the house is the marvellous cloister and around it stretch the residence and the office. The cloister has a majestic olive tree in the middle, the ancient Greeks’ sacred plant. The beauty and harmony of each individual item aid the place’s acquisition of a strong spiritual and mystic value.

– Have you always lived here?

I’ve been living in this house, with my family, for 40 years. It took us four years, or a little less, to refurbish it.
The building dates back to around the year 1000, it was owned by the Saint Anthony’s Abbey until the end of the 1800s. The Saint Anthony from Vienne regular canon order, with French origin, were devoted to caring for ergotism or Saint Anthony’s fire, to the point that they gained a great fame and, especially, a considerable wealth. The knights of the sacred fire treated it or tried to treat it with pork grease. To the extent that they had the right to let their beasts roam in all properties. The abbot prior actually lived in this former Abbey. After the Pio VI’s bull, all of the goods belonging to the Antonian order were sized and allocated to the order of the De’ Santi Maurizio and Lazzaro. These were the last to sell this house to a private family in the 1800s.

– As Pythagoras once said, “the beginning of wisdom is silence”.

While if you entrust yourself to some external stimulus, music, circumstances or something else, that isn’t good enough. The environment has its own relevance. The fact that you’re alone at night has its own charm, for me. There is some music which, when you listen to it, it makes me fond of it, but I don’t need it to work.
When I got to Bertone, I was practically alone as I got the ambition to do an autonomous office. My collaborators were very likeable people, some of them still come to see me. I remember a guy from Rome, he was cool. I have my own theory about Romans, one Roman: very likeable. Two Romans: unbearable. This one who worked with me was very pleasant, with his spontaneous and likeable jokes… but at certain times, I would have liked to be alone.

I look around and I think about the thaumaturgical power of nature, its beauty, its importance and also its magic.

Running on the mountains is my passion. A habit I nurtured ever since I was young. For a certain period of my life, I managed a company and you needed to be in the office at 8. Despite the fact it was a small company, with around fifty employees; to make it work well, you needed to take care of each person. When we worked on a Sunday, I was always present too, also as a form of respect towards my collaborators. If we wanted to bring results home, we needed to pay attention to deliver a well-made product in due time. I had established – not exactly with everybody, when you’re dealing with 50 personalities that isn’t possible – a reciprocal esteem and trusting relationship with some of them.
I remember an occasion, when we needed to create around twelve Mini prototypes, those that you make prior to initiating the production. It was around 1972, I took charge of delivering one every 20 days. As far as I can remember, the first two were delivered without problems. While with the third one we were late. At 22:00, I saw it was practically impossible to meet the deadline. I thanked everybody, I said “okay guys, never mind about tomorrow, we will be one day late.” I walked towards the exit and one of the two collaborators run after me and said “if you will allow us, we’d like to try anyway”. They consulted with each other and they wanted to try. Personally, I was skeptical, but if they had decided that, then it was fair to do it. And so, in the morning, the prototype was delivered. The help came spontaneously, I didn’t ask for anything. I think that if you set up the work in a certain way, you can gain satisfaction.

– They say that you reap what you saw, it means that the seeds were good.

These things are very pleasant, maybe they’re also the result of being always present, even out of hours. We never had major issues with Centro Stile, they were small problems. It has happened that I went to the hospital to see my collaborators, I understand that these things aren’t essential, but if you wish to set up a nice group, you need to be part of it and not only direct it. They’re things that are part of the shebang life.
I remember that when I left, we had a dinner organised by the workmen in a restaurant, I don’t know if they had drunk a bit, but they started to say we’re all going where you are. Well, but if you’re all going, then I’ll stay here. It was something likeable too.

– Then you achieved your goal.

When I started working alone, in my office, it was a different life from the very beginning. Managing a small company was a nice experience, but I was also happy to leave, we would have all become older and duller. The type of human relationship changes over time, each of us has their own personality and it becomes harder and harder to relate to others. The intimacy increases more and more, it almost is as if we were married, and being married with fifty people is heavy.
When you get to work, you need to get prepared to the idea, which is why I hated starting at eight. When I became self-employed, around forty years ago, instead of getting up early to be on time at work, I started with a run on the mountains and I started work at 11. It was a very pleasant and productive habit; I think that starting work around 11 is very civil.

– Was there a moment in the day when you were more creative?

I always slept quite little, two or three hours per night and then I went down to my office. I spent a few hours in the company of my dogs, they were a family of German shepherds. They used to sit around me, comfortably on their armchairs and they observed me: one working and the others watching him? All of that was pleasant.

– Design portrays trend, the historical moment, what surrounds us… you have designed some cars – like the Lancia Stratos Zero, the Lamborghini Espada – which convey the idea not only of the future, but the space trip too… they’re the years of conquering space

Yes, this had its own importance, I have to admit it. I was a fan, more precisely, I’d say involved in these things. I remember the landing on the moon.

It was 20th July 1969

We stayed up all night. They were never landing. There was Tito Stagno’s voice updating us, “yes, they landed, no, not yet…”, that went on all night long, until morning. It was the fact itself that stood out to me. But the moon was the synonym of something impossible, unreachable. You may say it was the dream of the whole humanity.

– To the extent to which, there is the expression “do you want the moon?” In relation to the Apollo XI’s landing on the moon, Neil Armstrong stated: “humanity took a huge step forward”

It was the idea that men, with their mere strength went to the moon. How the earth was done was already known to the Greeks, five centuries before Christ. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, was the first to calculate the earth’s circumference, using some ridiculous tools: a stick planted in the earth!
Aristarchus devised a method to measure the distance from the moon and the sun. Incredible, amazing things which had an incredible charm for me. Hipparchus filed in the most accurate star catalogue in all antiquity, where there are the celestial coordinates of over 1,000 stars. All of that was 200 years before Christ.
The idea that men went to the moon comprised all of this. Progress there was after Apollo XI’s journey is something I see as a continuum with the past.

– As well as classical reads, in that historical period, meaning the 65s/70s, did you also read anything concerning travelling to the moon or space trips?

Yes, before the trip to the moon, they published a well-made book, I cannot remember the editor, it was in two volumes. It was full of illustrations, with some very nice descriptions and then, when they went to the moon, they made the third volume. I was really fond of it.

Keep Following the story Chapter 2

Written by Daniela Borrini

Ph Angelo Rosa