Meet my Idol

I dunno what most people think about idols, But I have lived passed the era of chasing after the average singers or stars, Ang Mohs, Koreans, Japanese, Hong Kongers or Taiwanese no... in fact I have never been in THAT era... To me, that someone for me to idolise is someone with the ultimate abilities in my line of interest or that either he can and have change the world in for a good cause, which is in itself debatable of course.

Well today I am going to talk about my Idol, Since my interest is pretty well identified here, he is of course the Influencial but controversial Design chief of BMW - Mr Chris Bangle - someone whom I was fortunate enough to bump into at Vivo City. Mr Chris Bangle, for the sake of those who are ignorant, and his team of designers of course, as he so stressed their importance when I was chatting with him, came out with the BMW X5, followed by the 7 series, then the 5 series (in my opinion one of his best work, its THE BMW that i adore), the Z4, the 1 series, the 6 series, and lastly the most important car in the stable, the 3 series + the recently launched (as per 22/11/06) 3 series - coupes/cabriolets/"coupbriolets" (my invented term)

The styling of all these modern BMW, are by no less an achievement, on both the creative and artistic hands of that design and realisation team, but, much more than that it is really the convincing work, which I believe Mr Bangle has a great part to play in, that they have to go through to get the green light for each model. I quote Mr Bangle here, " the Management are like a group of logical, Lawyer mindset ppl who believe and speak a different langauge of results/ market studies/ customer response workshops/Feedbacks etc... as compared to the designers, who are much more emotive and sense more than talk." So the real work really is to realise the concept than to create concept itself, a widely known fact, further stressed upon by him. ( this quote was from a critic session of NUS Idustrial Design works with him as the guest critic)

Anyway first back to the the Latest BMW cars, the term used by the design team to decribe their revolutionary surfacing of body panels was "Flame Surfacing" - a new 'computer-inspired' design language - or simply put, a series of abruptly interlocking panel surfacing demarcated by unpredictable panel opening in practise . (quoted from, Tony Lewin "How to design cars like a pro")


My personal reading is similar, only on top of that, I like to add the level dynamism involved in the surfaces, that eventually taut up the entire form. The surface tensions formed in the body panels, are ordered by strong lines are usually the panel lines as well - and these lines are by themself, tensioned. As such the overall form, aided by the illusion of trapped energy on the body panel surfacing, gives a sensation of a coiled up spring and hence the inherent dynamism throughout each car styled under the "Flame surfacing" language.

Another reading O had with These New generations of BMW cars are that they are really fore-front in the car design world. There are cars, which designers design for today, there are concept cars designed for the future's future (those are far-out crowd-stopping concept cars that will never really make it into productions and historically it also means that you will never get such cars in ur garage, ever, no matter how near you are in the future). BMW cars are designed for the concievable future, this explains why people are at first uncomfortable with the new design language, the conservatives loath at the 7 and the 5 series when they were first unveiled, but now, 5 series is the definitive best designed car that hardly requires a facelift. Why? because, the general public are not ready for the futre, and BMW does jus that, design for it... so as the future becomes now, the cars sell like never before, people grown accustomed to its shape, and bingo comes the second wave of sales, and BMW has successfully move the entire game of car design forward by so much that styling Ques from BMW get copied everywhere, even it direct rivals may be sub-consciously doing it.


In other words, Mr Chris Bangle and his team of designers are really the brave ones who dared venture into unknowns and somehow made sure that it will turn from exclusive to mainstream (in terms of design language perhaps). there is only one word in chinese language which can describe these guys, "shen2" which roughly mean diety, roughly.

Anyway, i realised this post is getting really long, and maybe boring, not to me.. maybe to you. And i haven even went into the Knee-weakening meeting session with Mr Chris Bangle himself at Vivo City. Perhaps Tomorrow when i have the time.

There are time you believed that stars are meant for the skies, but occasionally one falls down to brush by you. I believe, I jus experienced that.