« Automotive atrocities : Bond Bug | Home Page | Hyundai Accent Hybrid »
Happy birthday Butzi!
By Yoann Besnard on 13 December 2005 | 
(2) Comments | Permalink
Butzi celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday. Why should this be noteworthy when he’s neither the first nor the last to celebrate his 70th birthday? As he retired from all professional involvement in the past few months, it’s an opportunity to look back over a career dominated by the Porsche 911.
Whereas his grandfather, Ferdinand and his father, Ferry were both engineers, Butzi was the first member of the Porsche family to attend courses at Ulm School of Design. This apprenticeship had a deep influence on the young Butzi. At that time in order to emphasize continuity with its pre-war pre-eminence in progressive modern design with the Bauhaus, Germany developed a simple, functionalist style which embraced both cars and household goods. Ferdinand uses the “ form following function “ concept in all his designs as he says himself: “ Design must be functional and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics, without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained. “
After his graduation, he worked under the influence of Erwin Komenda, the engineer who had designed all Porsches since the beginning of the 1930s. His talent emerged with the 911 project. Porsche wanted to replace the 356. Heinrich Kie -who created the modeling department in 1951- was in charge of the project with the help of the American stylist Albert Goetz. Butzi who was happy to come to the office with his father when he was a small boy was going to give the best gift to Porsche: a legend. Thanks to his success he was promoted head of the design studio in 1962 but was be obliged to quit ten years later after a family’s dispute.
Enthusiastic, he creates his own studio “Porsche Design”and like Rieter Rams at Braun he applied the Neo-Bauhaus style to a wide range of products from pens to watches sold under the Porsche brand. Coming back to the supervisory board in the 1990s, he founded a new company with the help of Porsche and some Porsche Design shareholders. The aim of this new company was to pursue the Porsche Design mission with the help of Porsche.
Comments
Posted by: angela | Sep 27, 2007 1:15:43 AM
Is this man who invented porshe first? Can you please reaspond to me on my email adress. I want to do a report on him. Thank You.
Posted by: bootst | Oct 27, 2007 6:35:16 AM
angela, did you not read the article? He's the grandson of the founder. Idiot
