Pio Manzù

Pio Manzoni (2 March 1939 – 26 May 1969), was an Italian automotive, product, and furniture designer who worked under the name Pio Manzù. One of his best known designs is that of the Fiat 127.

Education A son of sculptor Giacomo Manzù and his first wife Antonia Oreni, Pio Manzù studied product design at the Ulm School of Design , in Germany, under the guidance of Argentine designer and philosopher Tomás Maldonado. After his graduation in 1964 as the first Italian at this institution, he continued as a teaching assistant at the Ulm school. In 1962 he entered an international competition of the Swiss magazine Année Automobile, which he won with a design for an Austin Healey 3000. The prize was that the design would be executed by Carrozzeria Pininfarina, who displayed it at motorshows in Turin and London.

Work Autonova

Manzù realised a number of projects for interior decoration and started collaborating with several international publications, writing articles and making designs in the automotive field.

In 1965, together with automotive writer and fellow-Ulm-graduate Michael Conrad, Manzù set up the project group . They developed prototypes like the Autonova GT, based on the NSU Prinz and NSU Ro 80, and the Glas 1004-based Autonova Fam, a mini MPV before the category existed. The prototypes were realized by Turinese coachbuilders . It then became a Ritz-Italora product that was available in La Rinascente department store and has been included in the MoMA collection. Later it was added to the Alessi catalogue, in which it currently still is. Other product designs were writing and desktop materials for Kartell, and an automobile inspired lounge chair and a one-legged table for Alias.

Manzù also worked as a consultant for Piaggio and Olivetti. The collaboration with these companies lead to the realisation of the two Autonova prototypes.

In 1969, Manzù was the only non-French jury member for the selection of the Bolide Design exhibition organised by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Fiat projects

At Fiat Styling Center, Dante Giacosa at first was hesitant about the newly hired consultant Manzù's ability to fit in with the strict procedures of industrialisation of a product design. In 1968, his first project, however, led to the execution of a concept car for use as a taxi, mechanically based on the Fiat 850 with cutting-edge technical and styling solutions that Manzù had already developed at Autonova. The result, the Fiat City Taxi, was sort of a monospace avant-la-lettre and, while it didn't go into production, stylistically it formed the basis of what a few years later would become the successor to the Fiat 500, the 126. Almost 8 million would be built in two decades.

Death Pio Manzù never saw the result of his French museum judging job, his conceptual idea for the Parentesi lamp or his important project at the Fiat Styling Center. In fact, he was on his way to the presentation of the final Fiat 127 mock-up to the top management, in May 1969, when he had a one-sided car accident on the A4 autostrada Milan-Turin, near the toll booths of the Brandizzo exit, just 10 km before reaching Turin. Having come home late the night before, and having left early to get to the 8.00 a.m. presentation in time, Manzù had chosen to drive his wife's Fiat 500 instead of his own Fiat Dino. For an unknown reason, his car had rolled over. Manzù died in the ambulance before it reached the hospital.

Other recognition Apart from the items in the MoMA collection, parts of Manzù's work are also in the collections of Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo, which staged a retrospective exhibition of the designer's work in 2008, and in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. In 1969, the UN founded Pio Manzù International Research Centre in Rimini, Italy, in order to facilitate studies of economic and scientific aspects of the relationship between man and his environment. It closed in 2016. Fondazione Manzù has been established in order to support high-profile initiatives, projects and events to encourage studies and research in the field of design, technology of materials, production processes, means and infrastructures for mobility, and environment. There is a secondary school ("Liceo Artistico Giacomo e Pio Manzù") and a street ("Via Pio Manzù") named in his honour in Bergamo. In 2021, the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile in Turin staged an exhibition titled Che Macchina! 1971–2021 Pio Manzù e i cinquant'anni della 127 .

Publications