Studio Pasquini was born in 1972 at the car fair in Torino when Paolo Pasquini, a young architecture student at the University of Florence, noticed that the blocking systems for sliding windows were ugly, complicated and not very functional. He then decided to design one that was completely new and innovative.
At the time, he had no funds and no company supporting him but plenty of belief in his ideas and enormous design abilities that enabled him to find simple solutions to every problem.
So, he returned to Bologna and went into debt to pay for the first pilot mold of his “barilotto” and at the same time begins to create around him a tight and loyal group of suppliers, many of which have followed him in all his future projects.
In less than a year, the Pasquini window-lock system is in production and with a following deal with Luigi Balliano representing the Rossi Company in Torino, it is widely distributed to all the major Italian and European motor vehicle producers. Thanks to its simple use the Pasquini window-lock rapidly conquers the market and remains one of the leaders in its kind for over twenty years counting more than 6 million pieces sold to this day.
This success story gave rise to Studio Pasquini and allowed it to self support and sustain most of its future projects.
After the success of the window-lock, Paolo Pasquini got in contact with various car producers including Carlo Lavezzari at Lawil who give him the opportunity to make his dream come true: designing cars! Immediately Paolo wanted to design an electric vehicle, the Log, which was never put into production by Lawil because it was considered not attractive to the market.
This motivated Paolo to start his own company and self-finance the design and production of his own vehicles. The result of his first efforts were “Valentina”, a three wheeled car with 3 seats and an internal combustione engine of 125 or 250 cc. which he presented at the car fair in Torino in 1979 and the following year at the car fair in Paris. Despite winning several prices and awards, Valentina was never produced.
Starting in the early 80’s Paolo Pasquini decided to put his full attention and design work towards creating electric vehicles. During this time of intense research and passion he patented a differential gear, a quickly changeable battery-tray and the first prototypes of electric vehicles “Boxel” were built.
Moreover, in 1988 a series of race electric cars were created composing the Green Turtle Team that competed in and won several Formula-E races. All of the work in these years led up to the appearance on the market in 1990 of the Boxel, the first original patented electric vehicle in Italy: an electric transportation van to deliver goods in small urban areas.
Once Paolo Pasquini accomplished his experience as designer of vehicles, he used his know-how and expertise developed in those years to consult and manage as an independent contractor several projects concerning electric mobility.
Among those is the design of the first world electric earthmover built by Venieri, the Teener vehicle for Maggiora and the European project Ramses.
Parallel to these projects Studio Pasquini continued developing accessories for vehicles, particularly it created a handle and a door hold-open for cabins of farming machines or earth-movers. This time also, as for the previous window-lock in 1972, the solutions proposed by Studio Pasquini were able to satisfy fully the needs of the market in terms of performance and simple usability.
Starting in March 2011, and following the passing of the founder, the Studio Pasquini was taken over by Paolo Pasquini’s three children and Zeno Pasquini became the CEO. In addition to the experience built up by being in a family run business, Greta, Jade e Zeno added their own experiences in the fields of engineering, media and communication, marketing and management of innovative start-ups. In addition to continuing to develop the already existing project designed by Paolo Pasquini, the objective of the new company is to create a friendly environment to welcome and sustain ideas by young designers. With the belief that even starting from a simple idea it is possible to accomplish great results and success.
In June 2013 the documentary “The courage of the boxel” directed by Andrea Pavone Coppola and produced by Studio
Pasquini was presented at the Biografilm in Bologna.
The documentary tells the adventures of Paolo Pasquini and particularly of the Green Turtle Team, a stable of electric competition vehicles that in the early 90s participated in the Formula-E championship. For Studio Pasquini this was an opportunity to tell an important part of its history and explain once more what it means to have the courage to bring innovation.
