Mr. José Ignacio Aguirre

José Ignacio Aguirre is an industrial designer (Mexico 1970). He has a BA in fine art, specialising in design, from the University of the Basque Country. He also has a master’s degree in product development from DZ and a BA in three-dimensional design from De Montfort University (UK).

After working as a designer for Ingeniería BCT in Barcelona, he joined MSX Ibérica to collaborate in J.I. López Arriortua’s project, better known as Superlopez, and he was involved in the design of five vehicles for the CARMEN project.

In 1999, he moved to the Alfa Romeo Style Centre in Milan and won an internal competition to design the Alfa Romeo of the 21st century based on the Sportività Evoluta concept. As a result, Alfa Romeo presented the Alfa Romeo Centauri, which was the basis for future Alfa models.

He then became a member of the Fiat Style Centre in Turin where he led the design of the successful Punto 2005–2010, the New Croma and other projects for Alfa Romeo and Lancia.

On his return to the Basque Country, he was appointed the design director of two urban space & equipment companies, Onn Outside and Proiek.

In 2009, he founded his own design studio, Klap, a firm specialised in designing products for emerging markets.

He is the cofounder of Smotion (2014), a company specialising in the design of products using intelligent mobility.

Since 2015, he has been a lecturer in artistic expression at the Faculty of Engineering of Deusto University.

With over 15 years in design and innovation departments, his knowledge areas are strategic product vision and creating business value. He is excellent at managing to transform ideas into products focused on the human factor, social relationships and environmental demands in the automotive and urban space sectors and in new products linked via the internet of things concept.