It’s Italy. The year is 1983. Tiziana Rivale wins the Sanremo festival, Bingo Bongo rules the box office, and Voiello—a subsidiary of Barilla—wants to shake things up with a new pasta shape that will blow minds from Bussoleno to Poggiardo. And the only man for the job is Italy’s greatest designer, Giorgetto Giugiaro.

That’s right. The same man who penned the Iso Grifo; the original VW Golf; one of Jay-Z’s favorites, the Lexus GS300; and too many other iconic cars to name. Plus everything from Nikon cameras to Beretta firearms, and the 7000-pipe organ in la Cathédrale Notre Dame de Lausanne to the FIBA basketball. Giugiaro was a master of design and if anyone could pen a new pasta for the 80s, he was the guy.

The challenge wasn’t just about coming up with a new shape, however—anyone could do that. Yes, it had to do the usual pasta things like increase its volume in water while retaining its shape, and support and carry sauce while not absorbing it. But this being the 1980s, restaurants like New York’s Tucanos were enforcing the nouvelle cuisine craze, which meant that above all this new shape had to be eye-catching. Enter Giorgetto Giugiaro and his all-new pasta shape, Marille.

Thing is, like so many Giugiaro-penned projects, form does not always translate to function. (Although some very much do. -Ed.) Marille looked amazing, exactly the sort of thing that would top the menu at places like Espace, Arcadia, Texarkana—even Dorsia. But—and here’s the thing—Marille refused to become al dente. And short of rebuffing an invitation to the Feast of San Rocco, an Italian kitchen knows of few transgressions as severe.

These days, diners have returned to the fundamentals of Italian cuisine. Even the most high-end Italian eateries emphasize a respect for tradition, with innovative culinary approaches nibbling around the edges. Is that a loss? From a design perspective, perhaps. But ultimately the success of everything—even design—comes down to how people interact with it. And if an unsexy rigatoni can slake our hunger with less fuss, who are we to argue?

Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Inventive Marille Pasta [via Brave Architecture]