The Olympic Museum shows the Torino 2006 icons designed by Pininfarina

Turin, February 3rd, 2010. They have been the icons of Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games and they are both signed by Pininfarina. The Olympic Torch and a 1:50 scale model of the Cauldron raised outside the Olympic Stadium are exposed in the new Olympic Museum in Turin.   

The styling concept of the design of the Torch is a modern reinterpretation of the traditional wooden torch in which it is the metal itself to ideally catch fire and burn. In order to develop this concept it was created a dynamic and innovative shape that could remember a ski tip. Moreover it is a technologically advanced instrument which meets severe technical requirements: visibility to the distance of 100 meters also in the daylight, resistance to rain, snow, temperatures from –20°C to +25°C, to the wind up to 120 km/h to altitudes up to 5000 meters. The Torch has been passing through the national territory in a 11,000 km trip confirming its excellent performances: even though over 10,000 units have been lighted, we never experienced neither a flame extinction nor any other inconvenience. Besides the design and the engineering Pininfarina was also in charge of the production of 12.000 Olympic Torches and 125 Paralympic ones.

The originality of the object’s features was awarded by the assignment of the “Lorenzo il Magnifico”, the highest recognition of the Biennale of the Contemporary Art in Florence, and celebrated in the short story “The Shape of a Dream” by the Turinese writer Giuseppe Culicchia, who retraced, between reality and imagination, the various events that have characterized the caretion of the Olympic Torch.

“The creative project of the Cauldron, instead, was based on the desire to represent, in one single object, the tension of the Olympic challenge: five load-bearing columns launched forcefully upwards, representing the values of the Olympic Spirit. In the race towards the sky, the competitive tension will generate a torsion, pure energy that will immediately transform itself into the Flam. It is composed by five tubular structures with a 60 centimetres diameter and a total circumference of 3 meters diameter. A sixth central tube arrives at the summit, widening in the last metres, forming the place for the burners that will produce a flame four metres high. The Cauldron is 57 meters high and the highest ever in the Olympic history. A true piece of art which, after the Games, has become – we are proud to say – one of the new symbols of the city of Turin”.

The Olympic Torch and Cauldron are Pininfarina’s competence-concentrated products. The aesthetics excellence has been applied to the function and to the use creating two elegant and functional objects able to transmit the value of dynamism, like it has to be dealing with sport symbols”