What we set out to tell today is the story of two great visionaries who decided to conceive an entirely new design DNA for the world of two wheels. A precious guiding thread running through the history of Dotto Creations that thread carries the colour of true and pure Italian artisan passion. A noble aspiration towards excellence, already conceived by Virgilio in his epic poem, The Aeneid, with the words “Macte virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra” (Blessing on your young courage, boy; thus is the way to the stars), is a vision that the two co-founders, Francesco Iannuzzi and Gianluca Bartolini, carry with them in their vision.
– Francesco Iannuzzi and Gianluca Bartolini –
Two outstanding professionals with twenty years of experience gained at the world’s most exclusive automotive design centres: Pininfarina, Italdesign, Giugiaro and Volvo Group. Designers shaped by the school of perfection are accustomed to working alongside the highest aesthetic and engineering standards in the industry. As with all great visionaries, at a certain point in their careers, they sensed a growing inner restlessness: too many constraints and too many compromises in a sector that today is often somnolent, one that tends almost invariably to replicate rather than to truly dare.
And so it is that from this profound dissatisfaction, almost as an act of creative rebellion, was born Dotto Creations: an independent design studio with a workshop in Italy, just a few kilometres from Turin, producing one-off pieces and limited runs of handcrafted motorcycles. The philosophy underpinning every project is radical in its simplicity: return to the blank sheet of paper, shed every creative constraint, and approach the whole with an absolutely innovative and avant-garde perspective, asking why behind every form, questioning who decided that things must necessarily be a certain way, and whether a more authentic, more essential means of creating them exists, of making them truly unique. The core value that permeates every creation is what Iannuzzi and Bartolini call “semplificazione” (simplification): studying and seeking out the true essence of things, enhancing it, stripping away the superfluous. Drawing in ideas from every branch of knowledge, from art, engineering, literature and physics. The result is handcrafted pieces that are genuinely one-of-a-kind, challenging the state of the art and calling into question what is commonly referred to as the natural evolution of things. Three creations have emerged so far from this extraordinarily visionary approach: Biancaneve, Handyman, and Noveunosei.
The Dream of Biancaneve… It all begins with a 1979 Honda CX500, stripped down piece by piece, taken back to bare metal, repaired and restored until the mechanicals had returned to their original reliability. On that foundation, Francesco and Gianluca undertook a thorough redesign of the bodywork and the riding experience, starting from a deceptively straightforward question: what are the minimum elements for an object to be considered a motorcycle? Two wheels, an engine, and a means of controlling it. Nothing else. And so everything superfluous is shed. The machine is born as a sculpture before it is a vehicle. Its bodywork was shaped as pure form, with no initial concern for riding position, yielding a body that appears to flow even when standing still, simply and beautifully sculptural. The seat opens like a bonnet, revealing inside a black leather saddle with copper-coloured stitching and a concealed fuel tank. Only at a later stage did the designers turn to ergonomics, ensuring a comfortable riding position and intuitive interaction with the motorcycle. The result was met with extraordinary enthusiasm by the international trade press, with coverage in over twenty globally prominent publications, including Designboom, Design Wanted, Autoevolution, Hiconsumption, and many more. A motorcycle creation that has today become iconic on the world stage of two wheels.
The Legend of Handyman… The second project from Dotto Creations, born from the collaboration with Danilo “Handyman” Petrucci, an international racing rider who has competed and won in Superstock, MotoGP, MotoAmerica, the Dakar Rally and Superbike. Danilo approached the studio with a precise brief: he wanted a motorcycle he could ride every day, one that would perform well off-road, and that had to be sexy, not one of those old man’s bikes, to use his own words. The chosen machine: the Ducati DesertX, one of the benchmarks of the enduro category. Dotto Creations has completely reinterpreted it with full-carbon bodywork panels, new lighting clusters, a bespoke seat, a revised rear subframe and a redesigned fuel tank. The key innovation is the dual-position handlebar, developed and patented: a patent-pending mechanism that allows the rider to choose between a low riding position for motorway use and an upright position for off-road riding or urban traffic. The series is limited to just 10 units, each fully customisable to the client’s specification. A motorcycle of many characters: a sporting machine on tarmac, a beast in the mud, an icon in the city.
The Myth of Noveunosei… The third creation, taking shape from an encounter and a memory. Danilo Petrucci told the designers that the first motorcycle on which he had ever turned a lap on a circuit was the Ducati 916. Born in 1994 from the genius of Massimo Tamburini, it is arguably the most iconic road motorcycle of all time: clean lines, essential forms, and an aesthetic that has defied the passage of time and continues to captivate generations of enthusiasts. That year, the 916 was turning thirty, and the idea was inevitable: take the iconic design of the 916 and project it into the future, grafting that personality and that Nineties spirit onto the mechanics and technology of the Panigale V4. And so the vision for the new project takes shape: Dotto Creations reinterprets every element with functional intelligence. The Myth of Noveunosei is a limited series of 16 units, each fully customisable in colours, materials and accessories. A wonderful alchemy of aesthetic purity and mechanical precision.
In the World of Francesco Iannuzzi and Gianluca Bartolini, nothing is ever replicated. Every project begins from a vision, guided by one single creative thought: the pursuit of perfection through simplification. Biancaneve, Handyman, Noveunosei are its testament.
Three distinct creations, one unmistakable signature: Dotto Creations
Article edited by Massimo Basile
Editor & Founder
By mb@admin
