Bonetto, design and uniqueness
Style and creativity
After the International Furnishing Exhibition 2009, Luxgallery meets Marco Bonetto, leader of Bonetto Design Centre, one of the most important international design centres, as well as heir of Rodolfo Bonetto, giant in the history of design.
Let’s begin from his first steps in the world of design…
In the 1980s I was a rally driver with a huge passion for engines and my family has always been part of the world of cars: my uncle, in the 1950s, was a famous driver, Felice Bonetto; his son was until few years ago the deputy director of the magazine Quattroruote and at the beginning of my father’s career in the design sector there was the bodywork, with Vignale and Boneschi. When I decided to enter the job market, I was more interested in marketing and management so my father sent me for a year to work at the advertising agency of one of his friends. In 1984 I made my debut in my father’s office, with a managerial role.
And your father?
To work with my father was not too easy: he was an adorable and very humane person, but inflexible on the work place and since I was his son, within an office with many employees, was not a privilege, I was indeed always the “at the bottom of the heap”, I was the person who was not allowed to make a mistake. When my father became suddenly sick, in 1990, within few months set up a silent handover. He died in March 1991 and then I, son of such an influential person, had to deal with what the general opinion was at the time:” Bonetto’s son is never going to be able to carry on Rodolfo Bonetto’s business”.
I bet you won…
Absolutely yes. During the first, tiresome year I substituted all the co-workers who were used to work in a different way, since my father and I had two opposite views. He was a person dedicated to centralization, therefore “designer Rodolfo Bonetto with partners”, while I meant to create a Style Centre, with a group image. During this very rapid handover I tried to keep the clients, like Fiat Auto, since my father had a very close relationship with the Agnelli family; I was entrusted with a very small project: they wanted to carry on the collaboration with me but, as they admitted themselves, they feared I wouldn’t make it.
How did it go?
I not only managed to do that, but they gave me more and more projects and I became one of the official style partners of the Fiat group for many years. I decided to focus on the auto sector both for my personal passion and also because we have this image of experts on the car interiors’ design, which only few used to and still have. From Fiat I passed through Audi, Volkswagen, Subaru, MclAren, widening the range of clients, the structure and the organization. In 2005 I decided to open an office in Beijing, given the optimum that the market presented, and more recently an office in New York. Today we talk about Bonetto Design, a brand of the Design Center society that, in turn, has the brand Bonetto Design and the brand Rodolfo Bonetto.
Why China?
Four years ago I began to become interested in the Chinese market that has its own huge internal catchment area. I dared and six months later a huge I received a job order from a producer of luxury buses, for whom we designed interiors and exteriors and that was the beginning. Today China represents almost 50% of our turnover.
A strategic project only with China the one on luxury?
Since two years ago we have also been dedicated to an area of personal design for a very high target, demanding the uniqueness of the product, from the personalization of private jets, through yachts and Ferrari. But we also deal with smaller objects like bags, and with entire work environment. We create “to go around with something very precious that only I own”. The idea originated in China. I got to know a thirty-eight year old Chinese man, almost bored because, during a cocktail, an evening, he didn’t know how to spend his money. I started talking about uniqueness. To mock him, I said that the amount of vehicles of his car park – 15 Ferrari, Bentley, Porsche, Rolls Royce – put him in an even position with his rich friends. The first ideas came up and, one month later, he called me again to invite me to Shanghai to talk about a project for a totally personalized car, interiors and exteriors, which turned out to be pretty funny: at the presentation of the vehicle, this man organized a show with some friends.
What is the “cult” desig n object that you wish to design?
There are many, from the Brionvega radio made by Zanuso to the bean bag chair by Zanotta, that I was happy to see again at the International Furnishing Exhibition and that is an extraordinary object. A cult object today is much more difficult to create and most of our products on the market are a new version of historical products of the 1960s-1970s, some of which created by my father. Today there is less time to think through, the production is very wide, as we saw at the International Furnishing Exhibition and at Euroluce: everything has already been created and it’s hard to come up today with a new object, all the more if cult, as it used to happen back then.
Talking about style, pencil or computer? And between Industrial design and car sector, what is the field that better represents the made in Italy?
In my opinion nothing has changed, I still use the pencil and the modern technology is only a tool to facilitate the job and reduce the time for the project; they provide with an extent of representation which is highly greater than 30 years ago, but the truth is that the idea always comes from the head. Instruments do not substitute the mind: the brain transfers the first idea to a pencil and from there it goes to a blank paper. As for the made in Italy, in the car secotr, especially over the last decade, we achieved great results and the Italian style is always very welcomed by companies asking for a very refined product. From Giugiaro, that for 50 years has been creating wonderful cars, to a very close friend and apprentice of my father, Walter De Silva, today manager of the design of all the brands of the Volkswagen group. Italian, he has an Italian culture of industrial design and he gives his own interpretation of style on German cars. A great result given that Audi, since De Silva is working with them, had conquered formidable shares of the market and that one is an Italian style, very demanded in China.
If you were not a designer you would be…
A great chef, a peculiar one…
Strange? I would like to have a “little stand” on a beautiful beach, with only few seats, very elegant, where to cook selected dished, very tasty and very Italian of course. I cook very well, it is my hobby, and I am thinking about owning a restaurant kitchen, because I enjoy inviting people and cooking for them. Once a year I organize a “Pasta Festival” for my friends – 5,6,7,8,10 different first courses – that is very appreciated.
Paola Perfetti
Automobiles, Cult Products, Exhibitions And Galleries, Luxury Representatives, Motors, Motors Events, Stories Of Achievements, Yachts,
Tags: Agnelli, Audi, Beijing, Bentley, Boneschi, Bonetto Desgin Centre, Brionvega radio, Euroluce, Felice Bonetto, Ferrari, Fiat Auto, Giugiaro, International Furnishing Exhibition 2009, Marco Bonetto, mclaren, New York, porsche, Quattroruote, Rodolfo Bonetto, Rolls Royce, Shanghai, Subaru, Vignale, Volkswagen, Walter De Silva, Zanotte, Zanuso
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