Subterranean Style

more I enjoyed the feeling of speed and control.” Not even motocross racing gives high-energy Emma pause for thought. “Which kid doesn’t like getting dirty in the mud?” she asks, laughing. “Seriously though, that was a step up from go-karting. Motocross requires coordination and balance – and gives you an adrenaline rush.”

The sound of the 911 before school

Attributes that are also necessary for tennis. Beginning with her 13th birthday, Emma Raducanu is eligible to take part in International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments for players under the age of 18. Just eight days later, she’s the youngest player in ITF history to win the Nike Junior International in Liverpool, the first superlative in her budding career. She has long had a permanent trainer, who happens to drive a sports car. “Hearing his 911 pulling up at 7 o’clock in the morning was pure motivation,” she says. “I really liked the car and dreamt of having a Porsche one day.” She goes to Brands Hatch to watch the British Carrera Cup races and the Tourenwagen Meisterschaft final. She even visits a Formula 1 Grand Prix. “I follow different categories. I like Formula E because it’s an environmentally friendly innovation and the electric motors generate sensational acceleration. All the passing is also really exciting. I was thrilled when Porsche won for the first time!” She has experienced the performance of an electric vehicle firsthand – in the Taycan GTS Sport Turismo. “It was the most high-performance car I’ve ever been in on a public road.” She would like to race again – but first tennis.

Full throttle in 2021

As number 338 in the WTA global rankings, she competes in Wimbledon in early summer using a wild card and makes it into the last 16 – as the youngest British player to get through to the fourth round in the professional tournament. That’s the next superlative.

Just weeks later, she competes in the second Grand Slam tournament of her career: the US Open. In order to play in New York, she first has to fight her way through qualification and effortlessly wins her three matches. No one initially takes much notice of her at Flushing Meadows – that is, until she excels in the first three rounds and beats Shelby Rogers in the last 16. She goes on to defeat Olympic champion Belinda Bencic in the quarter final and Maria Sakkari in the semifinal and wins the tournament against Leylah Annie Fernandez 6–4 and 6–3 in the final match. Including the qualification, it’s her tenth victory in a row without losing a single set. A qualifier had never won the trophy before, turning the world of tennis upside down. The media runs with the story, and the winner is congratulated on all sides. Even the British Royal Family publishes the queen’s words of congratulations, and Martina Navratilova twitters, “A star is born!” The BBC names her Sports Personality of the Year, and the WTA Newcomer of the Year. In early 2022, she’s named Member of the Order of the British Empire for her service to her country and is the youngest woman to be honored in this way. How do you deal with that as a teenager?

In the paternoster lift

Loved by just about everyone and criticized by virtually none, Jane Austen’s heroine Emma Woodhouse would have an easy job of it. But life is not a novel. Emma Raducanu has become a celebrity not with a single stroke, but with many professional strokes, some of them exceeding 100 mph. Well-wishers and critics ride up and down with her as if in a paternoster lift. Her motivation on her way up and down: “Continuous improvement and getting better and just trying to learn and experience new things.” Emma has big plans. But first tennis. And then we’ll see. ●

Studio of Dreams

Good design has to be honest. Ferdinand Alexander Porsche founded the company Porsche Design together with his brother Hans-Peter 50 years ago on the basis of this manifesto and went on to develop his own, unmistakable style. Insights into the brand philosophy and the future of product design.

Origins: Lifestyle icons from five decades of Porsche Design. Outlook: Trend forecaster Carla Buzasi on tomorrow’s product design. Showroom: The 911 Targa 4 GTS 50 Years Porsche Design Edition. Icon: The Chronograph I marks the beginning of the success story.

2007 Fearless 28

The resemblance of the Fearless 28 speedboat to Porsche sports cars is visible at first glance. The Carrera GT, which was incredibly powerful for a series model at that time, served as inspiration for the design. The P’7121 features LED technology and is a component of the home lighting collection. The highly flexible light can be adjusted to just about any angle, making it a suitable ceiling light, wall light, and reading light, depending on the situation.

2007 P’7121 Floor Lamp

Style Icons

He used materials from the aerospace industry in a watch and invented sunglasses with interchangeable lenses: 50 years ago, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche founded his own design studio and became an influential designer of his time. His style: timeless, revolutionary, and iconic.

By Dirk BÖTTCHER Photos by Porsche Design

In 1979, a Yoko Ono press conference went down in the annals of design history when she sported the P’8479, a small, but important, accessory. For years to come, the artist and former life partner of John Lennon rarely made a public appearance without these sunglasses. In fact, they even became her trademark. The P’8479 is just one of the numerous style icons developed by Porsche Design over the past 50 years since Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (F. A.) and his brother Hans-Peter founded the company in 1972. The talented designer was viewed as a down-to-earth visionary who forgoes all the bells and whistles, focuses first and foremost on function in his designs, looks for innovations in technology and materials, and subscribes to purism with incorruptible quality standards. To this day, he continues to influence Porsche Design’s work – but not because he defined a specific form of design, but rather an attitude. In this way, the agency is always on the lookout for the next classic, for timeless designs, in order to develop new products such as the Exclusive sunglasses with their interchangeable lens mechanism. The design has remained unchanged for more than 40 years, with around eleven million pairs of these sunglasses sold worldwide.

The success story began when the designer, who died in 2012, was still a child, as his philosophy was based on profoundly practical facts. He describes his first attempts in an interview: “There were no toys to buy in 1949 and the years that followed. So we invented, designed, and built our toys ourselves.” From the beginning, the top priority was always function. His brother Hans-Peter, too, remembers F. A. being something of a pragmatic intellectual. “Once our mother gave us a basket full of eggs to paint,” he says. “Using the metal construction kit, F. A. then built a machine with a rotating holder in which to clamp the eggs.”

F. A. was also shaped at a young age by the countless hours he spent in the former Porsche development and design office in Zuffenhausen. The place Porsche once recalled as his playground. “I absorbed everything I saw and heard like a sponge and was happy and proud to be a part of it.” The first youthful attempts were soon followed by professional design. The designer joined the company in 1958, assumed responsibility for the

The Company

Porsche Design is an exclusive lifestyle brand established in 1972 by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche and his brother Hans-Peter. Along with the Porsche Lifestyle brand and Studio F. A. Porsche in Zell am See, Austria, the agency is managed by the Porsche Lifestyle Group. All Porsche Design products are still developed at Studio F. A. Porsche to this day. With offices in Zell am See, Berlin, Ludwigsburg, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, the design agency also caters to an international clientele. Further icons from the last 50 years of Porsche Design can be found at christophorus.porsche.com

Creative personality:

F. A. Porsche at his desk in 1979. His designs were shaped by function and extraordinary materials.

“Good design is honest design.”

Ferdinand Alexander PORSCHE

newly established Design department in 1962, and a short time later created the 911, an unmistakable line of one of the world’s most successful sports cars.

With the foundation of Porsche Design, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche ultimately expanded his creative influence from the automobile to product and industry design. But the sports car remained a point of reference. When leather is taken from the vehicle interior for use as a watch strap, the contours of a rim serve as inspiration for the rotor of an automatic watch, or cases can be configured in the original colors of the vehicle paint, the origin is self-evident.

F. A.’s design philosophy was characterized by pragmatic precision. In his eyes, a coherently designed product does not require any “bells and whistles.” His agency’s first product, the Chronograph I, is a testament to this conviction and boasts a design that ultimately stands the test of time. The world’s first watch designed all in black started a trend that would influence generations of watches.

And thus began a new era for the founder of the design agency. He made the decision to start the company once all the family members had withdrawn from the sports car manufacturer’s operations. F. A. began by designing classic accessories – watches, glasses, and fountain pen holders. The product portfolio has since expanded significantly and ranges from toothbrushes, perfumes, colognes, and toasters to electric kettles, computers, fashion, and even the design of entire buildings like the Porsche Design Tower in Miami. In addition to focusing on function, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche was always looking for references to special materials, which is how Porsche Design launched the first titanium chronometer in 1980. Until that point, the precious metal had only been used in aerospace. Ferdinand Alexander Porsche viewed this as a translation of his own functional standards in material form, which is also visible with the Tec Flex ballpoint pen that goes by the understated name of P’3310. With its woven stainless steel, this pen has an exclusive look and has since become another classic.

Each of these classics makes F. A. Porsche’s legacy all the stronger, as his attitude influences style and his guidelines are part of the brand identity. According to F. A., creations should be, for example, “honest and uncompromising,” “innovative and conceptual,” “luxurious and puristic,” and “timeless and high quality.” Principles that still apply to this day and on the basis of which Porsche Design develops each and every product. And these guidelines ultimately also reflect the iconic simplicity of F. A. Porsche, who once described the central ideas of his design philosophy as follows: “If you consider the function of a thing, sometimes the form comes about on its own.” ●

1978 The “Exclusive Sunglasses”

When the “exclusive sunglasses” are launched in 1978, they almost instantly define a whole new concept, as they’re the first pair of sunglasses to feature a change mechanism that enables adjustment to different light conditions. A timeless design with sales figures in the tens of millions.

2003 P’3130 Ballpoint Pen

Available as a mechanical pencil and ballpoint pen, the P’3130 Mikado models feature 17 polished stainless-steel rods around the barrel. When the twisting mechanism is engaged, the rods straighten out before returning to their original position, as the refill extends and retracts.

1989 TV 55

Porsche Design develops a TV for Grundig in 1989 to revamp the brand’s stuffy image. The result is a groundbreaking design with integrated speakers and remote control. Antireflective glass is positioned a short distance from the tube, giving the appliance a two-dimensional effect.

1979 Sport Shield

Yoko Ono makes the P’8479 sunglasses with their screw-in lens world-famous and, for years to come, never makes a public appearance without them – as on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1981. Pipe smoker F. A. Porsche frees the pipe of its stuffy aesthetic. The bowl with parallel cooling fins is made from aluminum, the body from briar root, allowing the full flavor of the tobacco to develop.

1983 The Pipe

1976 CP4 Motorcycle Helmet

The CP4’s visor is integrated into the shell to protect it from damage when open. As the visor lifts, a cleaning mechanism engages and removes any dirt. The colors of the helmet and visor can be freely selected for a truly unique design, which was innovative at that time.