| For Chris Bangle Monday mornings are always manic.
He is by nature an early riser. His office, which is BMW headquarters outside
Munich, is a fair drive away, though he confesses it’s a pleasurable
drive in his 7-Series, his third he admits. Nargess Shahamnesh-Banks steps
into the mind of the most famous car designer of our age.
Chris Bangle is one of the motor industry's most controversial of designers but he has his devoted followers |
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Addressing 250 hungry-eyed young, medium and old designers, theorists
and a handful of journalists atLondon's Design Museum, fully animated
with his arms dancing around, the designer begins: “I want to talk
to you about the future of car design,” and he certainly knows his
history. “For the future what one thinks about is progression and
choices, choices that are based around a certain set of parameters,”
he says.
The role of car design -- different to car art -- explains Bangle, is
fundamentally to give life to the object. Bangle highlights two key elements
that are the premise for all future changes. One is the customer's relation
to the car, and the other is how the car is made. What a car is to us
essentially defines how it looks. He reminds us that the most popular
car of all in America is a truck, but its usage makes it a car, with a
bigger boot. Secondly if form follows process then progress in production
has increased the level of freedom for designers. Here we enter the second
realm of Banglalism and that is a shear love of process.
Bangle talks of the age of the 'auto-mobile' -- not a romantic word he
admits -- when cars were simple made for mobility, like a vertical elevator,
he adds. Once emotion was added, the age of ‘the car’ was
born. Bangle says that the use of clay, the traditional medium for sculptors,
added a sculptural reference to car design. “Sculpture allowed for
a new level of fantasy to develop,” he notes.
Bangle believes that this is when the iconic format for the car was born
and to this day we base our concept of beauty on this ideal form. Just
as our concept of what constitutes the perfect nude was born out of what
the Greeks showed us in 5th century BC. “With the car we desire
the perfection in lines and symmetry that go back to those times,”
he says. These proportions -- a basic ships form with geometric sculpture
lines -- are still with us today.
However all was to topple over in the late 1960s when rationality or reality
took over from fantasy. "The whole idea that someday cars will fly,
went right out of the window,” he says. Process became a dominant
factor to how a car looked. The fantasy of sculpture, the emotion of the
shape and the freedom of the designer nearly disappeared.
Which brings us to the present day. “Now there are some real rational
changes in our lives that demand new solutions,” Bangle confesses.
“There isn't such a thing as brand loyalty anymore and car companies
cannot just get by on brand alone. Instead we have to establish a relationship
with our customers built on trust,” he says.
The relationship between form and function has become so divorced that
the customer requires new references to understand the car. “Customers
today don't have a whole lot of time, they don't have a lot of money,
nor much patience learning new things, they certainly don't have a lot
of patience waiting for new things,” says Bangle. The customer wants
a safe, secure, ecological, even politically correct product, with features
and functions to be at the best level possible, and last but not least,
they want a really good price performance ratio.
Car companies today may make mass produced cars that are more of less
the same, are of high quality, and don’t cost an arm and a leg,
but according to our designer this is not always coherent to how people
understand their world. “There are references in our lives that
make a mark and stay with us,” he insists.
So, according to Bangle, if the individuality customers strive for isn’t
possible through mass variation, then perhaps what the customer needs
are new references. Expectations have changed and the customer wants the
car to be ‘oriented’ towards them. This he stresses is very
different from ‘individual’.
Bangle hints at BMW's latest design philosophy, Gina, a term used for
the first time out of Munich. Gina is a concept or a philosophy of working
and within it are references such as geometry, industrial, low cost, high
quality, functional and emotional. “We need to bring humanity back
into process,” Bangle confesses. The philosophy will only work if
and when all parties involved, including suppliers, grasp the true meaning.
For Bangle form follows function, but with a new twist that is soul. “Soul
is the form that makes the body,” he reminds us. “Design has
reached the end of being able to be happy with the limitations carried
forward by production.” Gina will allow new ways for the designers
and production people to think.
The film director Francis Ford Coppola once said: “You can have
it quick, good or cheap; pick two”. In the car world you are also
limited to two choices from individual, low cost or high quality. Gina
says the whole approach has to be different and there cannot be any room
for compromises.
“We need to leverage everything that we have learnt from the great
era of the auto-mobile, add to it the capabilities that are in the humanism
of the process, and make sure they are fundamental to them,” he
finalises.
Bangle says bring the industrial and the artistic world back together.
“We need a new humanism that puts people back in the process,”
he says. His vision is to create cars in less volume, but keep them inexpensive
and at very high quality. “Instead of making everything so complex,
use the material properties and the Gina thought process to make it simpler,”
he adds.
Car design after all is a creative process. It shares so much with sculpture.
Interestingly Bangle brings up the example of Pygmalion, who made a beautiful
female sculpture, fell in love with it, kissed it and poof it came alive.
He too wants to be Pygmalion. "Take 'form follows function' and give
it the twist that soul is the form that makes the body,” he adds.
Design isn't constrained by process. It may naturally define some limit,
but the designer has reached the end of being happy with what process
allows him to do and it is this that needs rethinking, says Bangle.
Within BMW at one end of the spectrum sits the Z4; at the other extreme
the 7 Series and between reside the other members of the expanding family.
It was in fact with the 7 Series that the world first tasted a bit of
Bangalism. Liked by some, loathed by more, it laid the foundation of where
the Bavarian brand was heading. Bangle says it’s designed for a
whole world of luxury-oriented customer that happens to be stronger in
Asia and the US. These are a complex customer group, he tells us. “We
designed it for people who said they want more presence on the road, something
a bit more in your face.” He has no regrets though and admits he
had to make some dramatic changes with that car.
There is a lot of technology inside that needed to be housed, so the team
picked some shapes and made certain material choices to achieve a less
imposing structure.
The 1 Series entry-level car, to be launched later this year, is there
to introduce new and younger customers to brand. Bangle explains that
he didn’t want it to look like a 3 Series derivative, but a new
car from all angles. “It's a lot closer to the Z4 than to the 5
Series,” he notes.
The 1 Series is specifically aimed ay introducing new and younger people to BMW |
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The way BMW makes cars obligates it to find huge customer groups to appeal
to just to make the financials work. Bangle doesn't see this as working
in the future. He says the company needs to find ways to narrow this down,
offer more customers what they want.
“We are trying to design for every individual customer,” he
says. But to do this isn’t that simple. Firstly car making is a
billion-euro investment so you need to get half a million people happy
over that vehicle in its lifetime to pay this off. “If we can reduce
that by half then we only have to make 250,000 people happy by giving
them two kinds of cars. If we take it to the next step we get into smaller
batches.” It seems like a logical plan.
Bangle's 'vision', so to speak, is to perhaps move BMW out of its elite
and create a family of cars that range from here to there and cater for
a wider range than was previously possible. He is also a brave man --
or shall we say BMW is a brave company -- to rock an industry often stifling
in its own conservatism.
If BMW cars are dramatic and progressive, it’s because the company
is dramatic and progressive. It’s structured to be forward looking
in the long term,” he adds. “With the new strategy we were
deciding on cars now based on their relationship to products that were
going to come years later. We knew that we were going to meet a lot of
criticism, but the Board said it was the right thing to do because that
is the way we sell ourselves into the future,” he explains.
Maybe it comes from being a motorcycle company. He quotes Henry Ford: “Obstacles are those scary things you see when you take your eyes
off the goal.” Bangle says if you take your eyes off the road on
a motorbike, you will crash. “This is the mentality of BMW. It has
to have a continuously moving forward vision. This is the its motto.”
“Car design,” says Bangle, “is an emotional experience,
it's borderline erotic,” a word he is fond of. The designer is creating
something that wasn't there before. In the words of Italian sculptor,
Michelangelo: “release the form within”.
As the sermon ends, a group of young designers approach the bench eager
to discuss further their thoughts on design. As Bangle signs their sketchpads,
it is clear that in the eyes of the future creative world this man has
challenged concepts and set new standards. It won't be long before the
car world catches up.
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