I.DE.A Institute is a design, modelling and engineering company, based in Turin, with offices in Munich, Brazil and China.
It was founded in 1978 by Franco Mantegazza and Renzo Piano. Walter De’ Silva joined later and stayed 11 years with IDEA Institute until he left for the OEM sector. In 2010 Quantum Kapital AG bought IDEA Institute from Reiter AG.
The subsidiary in Brazil, with 50 employees, is mainly focused today on local engineering for Fiat. The office in Shanghai has 2000 m 2 and is expected to grow in terms of manpower. I.DE.A has worked with nearly all OEM’s, as well as many tier-1 suppliers. One key success story was the Fiat 500, wherein I.DE.A started in 2001 with the advanced styling and modelling of the 3+1 and later participated in all the many phases for its development.
In January 2011 Andreas Spiegelberger changed from Clartonhorn to I.DE.A and has built up quickly a lighting team in Germany from styling, visualisation, engineering, electronic engineering, project management, up to modelling. Top class engineers came on board, like Neda Vollaro from NEA Design for visualisation, Kai Witthöft from Delvis and COMWORKS (I.DE.A is shareholder) for electronic engineering, Ben Fischer from Gerg and Rainer Hohlbein from VALEO for modelling.