Milan Magic Panel Discussion
Panel Member: Francesco Lovo, Research & Development Director, PININFARINA EXTRA s.r.l.
Biography
Francesco Lovo was born in Castellanza, a small town in the north of Italy. In 1974 he moved to Piemonte, a small village in the hills 25 km west from Torino. He went to Giaveno Blaise Pascal Licee for high school, and developed his skills in painting and airbrushing and worked in his spare time at a coach repairing facility learning techniques and materials. After high school, he went to the Politecnico of Torino to study Aeronautical Engineering. He graduated cum laude in 1993 with the thesis, “Problems and topics about hypersonic flight of space launchers and civil transports.” While a student, he worked in his spare time as a freelance artist airbrushing and decorating helmets, motorcycles, and vans.
After two years of military service, he was hired by Fiat Avio to participate in the ESA program FESTIP for the development of new generation reusable space launchers. He had the opportunity to work in cooperation with the multinational ESA team at Daimler Benz Aerospace in Munich. After two years at Fiat Avio, he moved to Pininfarina Extra to develop an engineering team specializing in industrial design projects. Subsequently, he was in charge of commercial and sales activities. As the company grew, he left sales and took responsibility for the design and engineering team as R&D Director.
During this period, he personally managed several design and engineering projects for different customers in the industrial and consumer product and other design fields. In addition, he participated in research projects financed by EU for a hands-free computer interface for disabled people, voting machines, and a pharmaceutical product vending machine. He had now worked on more than 250 design projects.
In 2005-2006 he managed the research, development, and manufacturing program for Pininfarina SpA of the Olympic torch for the 2006 winter Olympic Games in Torino and the Olympic cauldron project. In 2007, he married and moved to Giaveno where he renovated a ’70s house on the basis of his own drawings.
Recently, while still managing the design and engineering activities of Pininfarina Extra, he is managing the strategic development and partnership of the company in the aeronautical field, promoting and managing specific design projects. He is also managing a new design company, created as a joint venture between Pininfarina Extra and Agemont to promote design culture and services in Friuli Venezia Giulia area.
Francesco is always feeding his interest in jazz music (he plays baritone saxophone in a 20-person big band in Torino), and science fiction modeling and costumes. His aeronautical passion drove him to get a glider pilot licence, and the love for the sea has been driving him underwater around the world and sailing the Mediterranean.
Pininfarina Extra
Company Profile
Pininfarina Extra, the Pininfarina Group company that specializes in product and interior design, was formed in 1986 to extend the Group’s services, quality and skills to firms engaged in all business sectors except the automobile and collective transport sector. It makes use of all the knowledge and research derived from more than seventy years’ experience in the design and production of cars and other means of transport. The company’s President and Chief Executive Officer is Paolo Pininfarina (Chairman of Pininfarina S.p.A.).
Over the last twenty years, Extra has established its own distinctive features and a clear identity. Its professionalism and competence are employed in many sectors where products bearing the Pininfarina name have won acclaim on the world’s leading markets. Extra views the design system as a way to blend the most advanced features of scientific, technological, and engineering research with the attractiveness that should accompany the things we use every day. Men and women, their needs, dreams and limits, are thus the center of Extra’s approach to design because they are the users of its products.
Mission
Being reliable and competent partners through the construction of long-term partnerships with firms wishing to use design as a strategic aspect of their corporate identity and a means of positioning themselves on the market in innovative terms through the development of successful projects and products.
Partners
Alenia Aeronautica, Jacuzzi, Lange, Lavazza, Gancia, Motorola, Primatist, Snaidero, 3M and other international leaders.
www.pininfarinaextra.com
www.pininfarina.com
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