Walter Maria de Silva

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Maria de Silva (born February 27, 1951 in Lecco ) is an Italian automobile designer . Until the end of 2015, de Silva was responsible for the design of Volkswagen . Before that, he developed new design concepts for Alfa Romeo (1986–2001) as well as for Seat and Audi as chief designer .

Life

De Silva started working in the automotive sector in 1972 at the Centro Stile Fiat in Turin . From 1975 to 1979 he worked in the studio of the Italian designer Rodolfo Bonetto in Milan , designing furniture. In 1979 he went back to Turin to work at the I.De.A Institute design studio . De Silva became known from 1996 through the Alfa Romeo 156 , which he designed for the Milanese car manufacturer.

At the suggestion of Ferdinand Piech - who described the 156 Sportwagon as the most beautiful car in the segment - the designs for the Alfa 156 and in particular its estate variant Sportwagon prompted the Volkswagen Group to recruit de Silva for the VW Group.

In 2001, after the introduction of the Alfa Romeo 147 , he moved to Seat in Spain , where he designed the Van Altea and, as a result, the Ibiza , León  2 and the Toledo  3. His first project for Audi was the second-generation A6 . Audi owes it to him for the current, more emotional, Italian-looking design language. He thereby complied with the request of the Audis group management to reinterpret the technoid, engineering virtues of the models of the 1990s. The single-frame radiator grille of the new Audi models as well as the light edges on the shoulder line and the strongly pronounced so-called Toronado line were also created under his direction. Other de Silva's projects were the Audi Nuvolari quattro, the R8 and the second-generation TT .

From February 1, 2007 he was responsible for design at Volkswagen AG . He retired on November 30, 2015.

He has been working for the engineering service provider EDAG since May 2017 .

gallery

Here are a few vehicle designs from de Silva:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Klein: VW chief designer Walter de Silva goes on board at EDAG. In: automobil-produktion.de. June 17, 2013, accessed July 13, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME De Silva, Walter Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian automobile designer
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Lecco , Italy