Walter de Silva yesterday accepted the ADI “Compasso d’Oro” (Golden Compass) Award for his lifetime achievements in Rome.
An international panel of judges described de Silva as an “undisputed protagonist of Italian design” and presented him with the award for his 40-year career in the presence of dignitaries, the members of ADI (Italian Association of Industrial Design), the Fondazione ADI, the Fondazione Valore Italia, selected guests as well as the press. The Compasso d’Oro Career Award honors Italian and international personalities alike and their outstanding services in the realm of design, research, teaching, production and distribution.
Walter de Silva has been head of Volkswagen Design since 2007; in his position, he is responsible for the design of all brands. Over the course of his career, he has received several design awards, among them the “Design Prize of the Federal Republic of Germany”—the highest official design award in Germany—for the Audi A5 in February 2010.
de Silva is not happy speaking English , but I recall his presentation to the UK press of the Alfa GTV and swiftly drawing a few lines on a sketch pad to illustrate its simple styling which he promptly tore up. I got back to my hotel room to discover a limited, signed edition of the same three-line sketch. It hangs on my office wall to this day.
Then at the Geneva reveal of the A5 he did that great Italian operatic thing of crying as he described it “as the most beautiful car he had ever designed.”
I happened to be standing next to another chief designer at the time and, in a rare moment of praise between bitter rivals, he turned to me and said, “I wish I had designed that car.”
So, let the debate begin: does de Silva deserve that praise?
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