Art Contest, Ducati Style!
ART CONTEST, DUCATI STYLE!
ROUNDUP
THINK HOW BORING life would be if it were only about functionality. We're nodding off just thinking about it! Yep, style is everything, always has been, and nobody knows this better than Ducati, whose current success was built on one of the most stylish bikes of all time, Massimo Tamburini's masterpiece, the 916.
this in mind, Ducati last year organized a competition called “Design Your 24/CYCLE
Ducati.” Twelve months later, after judging by a jury of advertising and design experts, and Ducati bigwigs (including CEO Federico Minoii and design chief Pierre Terblanche), winners have been chosen. As
you can see by some of the top submissions gathered here, it wasn’t just for bikes, either. No, anything was possible, as long as the design ethic was clearly Ducati in its inspiration. The contest was “dedicated to the passion, talent and imagination of A
Ducati fans all over the world.”
Entries numbered in the thousands, and came from all kinds of people from, yes, all over the world. Top prize in the Bike category was the cool-and-cut-down café/bobber-style air-cooled twovalver called “Flat Red” by German Jems Von Brauck. Clearly, the scale model incorporates styling riffs that are not feasible for regular production, such as the singeyour-cheeks dual exhausts and upholstered-credit-card seat, but that doesn’t make it any less stirring.
A favorite has to be one of the Special Prize winners (think honorable mention), the “Cucciolo ’03,” a trellisframed mini-desmo-Singlepowered mountain bike, inspired by Ducati’s first motorized effort, a clip-on engine for bicycles manufactured in the 1950s. Makes us want to
light an Italian cigarette and hit the trail...
Heavy smokers can take heart in Non-Bike category overall winner, English designer Steve Gummer’s Artificial Heart, a “small, strong, lightweight, highly tuned and perfectly engineered artificial organ,” built using Ducati’s trademark desmodromic valve system. Just hope the service intervals are longer than normal.
Equally fun if not quite as fanciful is the CD player inspired by a gas cap, complete with brake-lever-style control module. Other interesting items included a not-so-ordinary bathroom scale using two 999 tripleclamps/fork tops and plate glass for structure, with a 999 gauge package as readout. No word if it’s loaded with the newest software updates.
The R&D Special Prize was awarded to Massimo Zaniboni for his Ducati Roadster, drawn in both faired and unfaired versions. Definitely fell into the “most produceable” category.
For those with a serious Ducati fetish, nothing else will do but a pair of trellisframed stiletto heels.
Said Ducati Creative
Gross, “When you get in touch with your real fans like this and they’re so talented, it’s fantastic. The quality of the work and use of technology in the entries was mind-blowing.”
He says it’s unlikely that even elements of these designs
would see production, although the material is definitely being used to “push internal debates and to think about things in new ways.”
Plans are afoot to hold the contest again, so sharpen your pencils, because the two overall winners were honored during the recent World Ducati Week in Italy, and awarded new Ducatis (models to be determined). Perhaps Ducati really is just waiting to produce one or two of these concepts?
Mark Hoyer
