What Turin has taught me about design.

There’s something about Turin that reveals itself slowly. It’s not loud or dramatic, but precise, intentional, and deeply rooted in making things well. Coming from an engineering background, I arrived focused on function, how things work, how they’re built, how they perform. What Turin changed was not that foundation, but what I chose to prioritize alongside it.

At Istituto Europeo di Design, during my Master’s in Transportation Design, I started understanding that design is less about adding and more about refining. It’s not about chasing visual impact, but about clarity. Every line, surface, and proportion has to justify itself-not aesthetically, but logically and emotionally.

That shift became very real during my thesis with Pagani Automobili, where I led the Alias CAS design team working toward a full-scale 1:1 model. At that level, there’s no room for assumptions. Surfaces reflect truthfully, and any lack of resolution becomes immediately visible. It teaches you that precision is not just technical execution-it’s the discipline of making clear, intentional decisions.

The same thinking applied to the DUMBO project, a hazelnut harvester developed with Ferrero and New Holland. Even in a completely different domain, the core remained unchanged-design had to communicate function clearly. The form, inspired by an elephant, wasn’t about styling, but about making the machine intuitive and understandable at a glance. That’s where I realized that design doesn’t really change across industries, only its expression does.

Over time, the gap between engineering and design became smaller. Engineering ensures something works. Design ensures it matters. Turin, with its automotive legacy, constantly reinforces this balance. You begin to see how proportion defines presence, how surfaces control light, and how restraint often creates stronger results than complexity.

What stayed with me is simple but demanding-design is not decoration, it’s decision-making. And when those decisions are grounded in both purpose and story, the result doesn’t just look right, it feels right.