Ferdinand Alexander Porsche
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Ferdinand Alexander Porsche | |
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Born | Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche | 11 December 1935
Relatives | Ferdinand Porsche (grandfather) Ferdinand Piëch (cousin) |
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (11 December 1935 – 5 April 2012), also known with the nicknamed "Butzi", was a German designer whose best known product was the first
While his grandfather and father were both engineers, he was more involved in working out the appearance of a product. He never thought of himself as an artist or designer, but more as a technically talented craftsman in shaping.[citation needed]
Education
After attending the Waldorf School in Stuttgart he began studying industrial design in Ulm, Germany.[2] After a year he was dismissed by the examination board, because his talent was doubted. In 1957 he started practical training at the body design department of the family-owned sports car company under design director Erwin Komenda.[2]
Porsche 911
When it came to the designworks of the
Porsche 904
Ferdinand Alexander also shaped another important car, the Porsche 904. He stated that the 904 was his favorite work for Porsche.[citation needed] Its body shell was made of Fiberglass-reinforced resin at the aircraft company Heinkel.[citation needed] The car was to be approved by racing homologation officers until a set date in order to attend the same year's racing season. Thus, the development team was under extreme time pressure. F.A. liked the design of the 904 best, as there was no time for anyone to demand or initiate changes, so it is his most original draft.[citation needed]
Porsche Design Group
After the family decided to change the company's legal form and to keep the family out of its management, Ferdinand Alexander founded his own industrial design company,
In 1978 F.A. teamed up with Swiss watchmaker
F.A.'s appeal to using unusual materials showed in the very rare Chrono II made by IWC. Its case was made of bead-blasted aluminum with bracelet made out of fibre-reinforced resin. This watch also employed integrated pushers.[citation needed]
Watches are still a main business of Porsche Design. In 1996 the Swiss watchmaker Eterna, which invented the ball bearing for the winding rotor used in automatic movements, was bought by F.A. holding company.
The Porsche Design product suffering most often from plagiarism is probably the sunglasses with drop-shaped lenses, which was issued during the 1980s in a lot of unusual color combinations, e.g., purple lenses with golden or white frame.[citation needed] F.A. designed many more spectacles. Most often, they had some unique attributes — e.g., a saddle-shaped cushion adapting to the nose shape automatically and opening symmetrically through an internal cam mechanism. The drop-shaped spectacle had a quick release mechanism to provide quick lens changes. One pair even had magnetically held lenses; another one got its shape from the intended production method: Its shape was accommodated to a sand casting process of titanium. The production issue was actually not made of titanium, but the shape remained.[citation needed]
Transportation design remained an issue on F.A. Porsche. He made several studies for metropolitan trains, a motorcycle, several bicycles and a slightly dolphin-shaped racing boat called Kineo.[citation needed]
As the company grew the product categories diversified. There are three possibilities how designs made by Porsche Design can appear — Porsche Design brand products made exclusively for Porsche Design; products bearing the manufacturer's name and the writing "Design by F.A. Porsche"; and products with no hint of Porsche Design at all. Porsche Design came up with several bathroom designs, a washing machine, furniture, knives, television receivers, desk lamps (one with three telescoping radio antennas attaching the light bulb holder to the base and one employing design aspects of a guillotine in its pull-out mechanism), tobacco pipes with air-cooled-engine-inspired cooling fins, pens made out of wire-cloth used in oil hoses for racing engines, computer monitors, computer external hard drives, coffee makers, and even a grand piano for an Austrian manufacturer Bösendorfer.[citation needed] The Design by F.A. Porsche mark is used no more, with the exception of the professional kitchen knives of Chroma Cnife.
The formerly completely private owned Porsche Design company belongs in the meantime to a cooperation company between F.A. Porsche and the Dr.-Ing. hc F. Porsche AG, of which F.A. held roughly 13%. F.A. Porsche retired in 2005 due to his state of health. He was given the title Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board, a title that was originally invented for his father when he retired. He died in Salzburg, Austria on April 5, 2012, aged 76.[citation needed]
References
- ^ "70. születésnapját ünnepli Ferdinand Alexander Porsche". M1 (Hungarian State Television) (in Hungarian). 2005. Retrieved 2008-04-07.
- ^ Auto Motor u. Sport. Heft 22 1977: Seite 8–10. 26 October 1977.