17/11/17

Design Museum explores the world of Ferrari at 70

Design

Ferrari is an inspiring brand with a captivating story. The company founder, Enzo Ferrari, famously said: ‘If you can dream it, you can do it’. His dream was to make the purest of racing cars. He wanted to make beautiful, efficient vehicles that win races. Quite the maverick, Enzo’s passion and determination were so great that he conceived Ferrari in Modena, Italy in the very midst of post-war austerity. Enzo achieved his aim – Ferrari race cars are still winning races, and the road cars are objects of pure beauty and desire.

The Design Museum in London is exhibiting Ferrari: Under the Skin (until April 2018) to celebrates the brand’s seventieth birthday, pay tribute to the life and work of this visionary man, and the company he created. The museum’s founder, Sir Terence Conran says: ‘We have all at some point had delicious dreams of owning a Ferrari.’

Here in the vast basement exhibition space, the cars on stage are dissected, each one placed within a time and a place in history so we see the context in which these vehicles were made. There are original hand-drawn sketches, early hand-sculpted wooden models that reveal the pure relationship between form and function – a philosophy at the very core of Ferrari design.

‘Ferrari’s story has been one of the great adventures of the industrial age,’ says exhibition curator Andrew Nahum, ‘represents an absorbing case study in design and development.’ The exhibition ends on a note to Ferrari’s ecological future, displaying its most sustainable car – the 2016 LaFerrari Aperta and its hybrid engine, exhibited in a such a way as to resemble a work of art.

For Ferrari function has always determined design. Enzo wanted to create cars that win races, saying: ‘No one remembers who took second place.’

Images © Museo Ferrari

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