Walter de Silva

Walter Maria de Silva (born 27 February 1951 in Lecco, Italy) is an Italian car designer who was Head of Volkswagen Group Design until 2015. Since beginning his car design career in 1972 as head of design for Fiat, de Silva has also worked as a designer at I.DE.A Institute, and as head of design for Alfa Romeo, SEAT and the 'Audi brand group'.

He has now entered the woman shoe business by creating his own company "Walter De Silva Shoes".

Walter de Silva began his career in 1972 at age 21, working for Centro Stile Fiat.

After his experience at Fiat, Walter de Silva worked at the I.DE.A. Institute in Turin, Italy for nine years under the direction of Franco Mantegazza and Renzo Piano.

In 1986 Walter de Silva was recruited away from the I.DE.A. Institute to become head of Alfa Romeo's Centro Stile. Walter de Silva remained in this role until 1999.

At Alfa Romeo, de Silva led the renewal of the brand's design language and repositioning.

In 1999 Ferdinand Piëch assigned Walter de Silva to work for the Volkswagen Group SEAT division, with the aim of injecting verve and sportiness to SEAT design. The result was SEAT 'auto emoción' philosophy which was first demonstrated in the 2000 SEAT Salsa and the 2001 SEAT Tango concept cars, as a foretaste of SEAT new design language, with the latter receiving in 2002 the 'Autonis Award' in the Concept Car category. His more expressive design approach has since influenced the form and look of numerous cars, such as the 2002 SEAT Córdoba and SEAT Ibiza, as well as the 2004 SEAT Altea and 2005 SEAT León which were highly acclaimed and subsequently received several design awards (e.g. Red dot design award, Autonis award, 'The World's Most Beautiful Automobile 2004' award in Milan etc.).

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