TED2002
Chris Bangle: Great cars are great art
Filmed:
Readability: 3.2
973,938 views
American designer Chris Bangle explains his philosophy that car design is an art form in its own right, with an entertaining -- and ultimately moving -- account of the BMW Group's Deep Blue project, intended to create the SUV of the future.
Chris Bangle - Car designer
Car design is a ubiquitous but often overlooked art form. As chief of design for the BMW Group, Chris Bangle has overseen cars that have been seen the world over, including BMW 7 Series and the Z4 roadster. Full bio
Car design is a ubiquitous but often overlooked art form. As chief of design for the BMW Group, Chris Bangle has overseen cars that have been seen the world over, including BMW 7 Series and the Z4 roadster. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:26
What I want to talk about is, as background,
0
1000
3000
00:29
is the idea that cars are art.
1
4000
2000
00:31
This is actually quite meaningful to me,
2
6000
3000
00:34
because car designers tend to be a little bit low on the totem pole --
3
9000
4000
00:38
we don't do coffee table books with just one lamp inside of it --
4
13000
3000
00:41
and cars are thought so much as a product
5
16000
3000
00:44
that it's a little bit difficult to get into the aesthetic side
6
19000
3000
00:47
under the same sort of terminology that one would discuss art.
7
22000
3000
00:50
And so cars, as art, brings it into an emotional plane -- if you accept that --
8
25000
6000
00:56
that you have to deal with on the same level you would with art with a capital A.
9
31000
3000
00:59
Now at this point you're going to see a picture of Michelangelo.
10
34000
3000
01:02
This is completely different than automobiles.
11
37000
3000
01:05
Automobiles are self-moving things, right? Elevators are automobiles.
12
40000
6000
01:11
And they're not very emotional; they solve a purpose;
13
46000
3000
01:14
and certainly automobiles have been around for 100 years
14
49000
3000
01:17
and have made our lives functionally a lot better in many ways;
15
52000
3000
01:20
they've also been a real pain in the ass,
16
55000
2000
01:22
because automobiles are really the thing we have to solve.
17
57000
4000
01:26
We have to solve the pollution, we have to solve the congestion --
18
61000
3000
01:29
but that's not what interests me in this speech.
19
64000
3000
01:32
What interests me in this speech is cars. Automobiles may be what you use,
20
67000
5000
01:37
but cars are what we are, in many ways.
21
72000
3000
01:40
And as long as we can solve the problems of automobiles,
22
75000
4000
01:44
and I believe we can, with fuel cells or hydrogen, like BMW is really hip on,
23
79000
4000
01:48
and lots of other things, then I think we can look past that
24
83000
3000
01:51
and try and understand why this hook is in many of us --
25
86000
4000
01:55
of this car-y-ness -- and what that means, what we can learn from it.
26
90000
4000
01:59
That's what I want to get to. Cars are not a suit of clothes;
27
94000
3000
02:02
cars are an avatar. Cars are an expansion of yourself:
28
97000
4000
02:06
they take your thoughts, your ideas, your emotions, and they multiply it --
29
101000
4000
02:10
your anger, whatever. It's an avatar.
30
105000
3000
02:13
It's a super-waldo that you happen to be inside of, and if you feel sexy,
31
108000
3000
02:16
the car is sexy. And if you're full of road rage,
32
111000
2000
02:18
you've got a "Chevy: Like a Rock," right?
33
113000
3000
02:21
Cars are a sculpture -- did you know this?
34
116000
3000
02:24
That every car you see out there is sculpted by hand.
35
119000
3000
02:27
Many people think, "Well, it's computers,
36
122000
2000
02:29
and it's done by machines and stuff like that."
37
124000
2000
02:31
Well, they reproduce it, but the originals are all done by hand.
38
126000
3000
02:34
It's done by men and women who believe a lot in their craft.
39
129000
4000
02:38
And they put that same kind of tension into the sculpting of a car
40
133000
4000
02:42
that you do in a great sculpture that you would go and look at in a museum.
41
137000
3000
02:45
That tension between the need to express, the need to discover,
42
140000
4000
02:49
then you put something new into it,
43
144000
2000
02:51
and at the same time you have bounds of craftsmanship.
44
146000
3000
02:54
Rules that say, this is how you handle surfaces;
45
149000
3000
02:57
this is what control is all about; this is how you show you're a master of your craft.
46
152000
4000
03:01
And that tension, that discovery, that push for something new --
47
156000
3000
03:04
and at the same time, that sense of obligation
48
159000
2000
03:06
to the regards of craftsmanship --
49
161000
2000
03:08
that's as strong in cars as it is in anything.
50
163000
2000
03:10
We work in clay, which hasn't changed much
51
165000
2000
03:12
since Michelangelo started screwing around with it,
52
167000
3000
03:15
and there's a very interesting analogy to that too.
53
170000
3000
03:18
Real quickly -- Michelangelo once said he's there to "discover the figure within," OK?
54
173000
6000
03:24
There we go, the automobile.
55
179000
2000
03:26
That was 100 years right there -- did you catch that?
56
181000
2000
03:28
Between that one there, and that one there, it changed a lot didn't it?
57
183000
3000
03:31
OK, it's not marketing; there's a very interesting car concept here,
58
186000
4000
03:35
but the marketing part is not what I want to talk about here.
59
190000
2000
03:37
I want to talk about this.
60
192000
2000
03:39
Why it means you have to wash a car, what is it, that sensuality
61
194000
2000
03:41
you have to touch about it? That's the sculpture that goes into it. That sensuality.
62
196000
5000
03:46
And it's done by men and women working just like this, making cars.
63
201000
5000
03:51
Now this little quote about sculpture from Henry Moore,
64
206000
2000
03:53
I believe that that "pressure within" that Moore's talking about --
65
208000
3000
03:56
at least when it comes to cars --
66
211000
2000
03:58
comes right back to this idea of the mean.
67
213000
3000
04:01
It's that will to live, that need to survive, to express itself,
68
216000
3000
04:04
that comes in a car, and takes over people like me.
69
219000
2000
04:06
And we tell other people, "Do this, do this, do this," until this thing comes alive.
70
221000
4000
04:10
We are completely infected. And beauty can be the result
71
225000
4000
04:14
of this infectiousness; it's quite wonderful.
72
229000
2000
04:16
This sculpture is, of course, at the heart of all of it,
73
231000
3000
04:19
and it's really what puts the craftsmanship into our cars.
74
234000
3000
04:22
And it's not a whole lot different, really, when they're working like this,
75
237000
4000
04:26
or when somebody works like this.
76
241000
2000
04:28
It's that same kind of commitment, that same kind of beauty.
77
243000
3000
04:31
Now, now I get to the point. I want to talk about cars as art.
78
246000
3000
04:34
Art, in the Platonic sense, is truth; it's beauty, and love.
79
249000
4000
04:38
Now this is really where designers in car business diverge from the engineers.
80
253000
4000
04:42
We don't really have a problem talking about love.
81
257000
2000
04:44
We don't have a problem talking about truth or beauty in that sense.
82
259000
3000
04:47
That's what we're searching for --
83
262000
2000
04:49
when we're working our craft, we are really trying to find that truth out there.
84
264000
3000
04:52
We're not trying to find vanity and beauty.
85
267000
2000
04:54
We're trying to find the beauty in the truth.
86
269000
2000
04:56
However, engineers tend to look at things a little bit more Newtonian,
87
271000
4000
05:00
instead of this quantum approach.
88
275000
2000
05:02
We're dealing with irrationalisms,
89
277000
2000
05:04
and we're dealing with paradoxes that we admit exist,
90
279000
2000
05:06
and the engineers tend to look things a little bit more like
91
281000
2000
05:08
two and two is four, and if you get 4.0 it's better, and 4.000 is even better.
92
283000
5000
05:13
And that sometimes leads to bit of a divergence
93
288000
4000
05:17
in why we're doing what we're doing.
94
292000
2000
05:19
We've pretty much accepted the fact, though,
95
294000
2000
05:21
that we are the women in the organization at BMW --
96
296000
2000
05:23
BMW is a very manly type business, -- men, men, men; it's engineers.
97
298000
3000
05:26
And we're kind of the female side to that. That's OK,
98
301000
3000
05:29
that's cool. You go off and be manly. We're going to be a little bit more female.
99
304000
3000
05:32
Because what we're interested in is finding form that's more than just a function.
100
307000
7000
05:39
We're interested in finding beauty that's more than just an aesthetic;
101
314000
3000
05:42
it's really a truth.
102
317000
2000
05:44
And I think this idea of soul, as being at the heart of great cars,
103
319000
3000
05:47
is very applicable. You all know it. You know a car when you've seen it,
104
322000
3000
05:50
with soul. You know how strong this is.
105
325000
2000
05:52
Well, this experience of love, and the experience of design, to me,
106
327000
4000
05:56
are interchangeable. And now I'm coming to my story.
107
331000
3000
05:59
I discovered something about love and design through a project called Deep Blue.
108
334000
5000
06:04
And first of all, you have to go with me for a second, and say,
109
339000
4000
06:08
you know, you could take the word "love" out of a lot of things in our society,
110
343000
3000
06:11
put the word "design" in, and it still works,
111
346000
2000
06:13
like this quote here, you know. It kind of works, you know?
112
348000
3000
06:16
You can understand that. It works in truisms.
113
351000
3000
06:19
"All is fair in design and war."
114
354000
2000
06:21
Certainly we live in a competitive society.
115
356000
2000
06:23
I think this one here, there's a pop song
116
358000
2000
06:25
that really describes Philippe Starck for me, you know, this is like
117
360000
4000
06:29
you know, this is like puppy love, you know, this is cool right?
118
364000
3000
06:32
Toothbrush, cool.
119
367000
2000
06:34
It really only gets serious when you look at something like this. OK?
120
369000
3000
06:37
(Laughter)
121
372000
2000
06:39
This is one substitution that I believe
122
374000
2000
06:41
all of us, in design management, are guilty of.
123
376000
2000
06:43
And this idea that there is more to love,
124
378000
4000
06:47
more to design, when it gets down to your neighbor, your other,
125
382000
6000
06:53
it can be physical like this, and maybe in the future it will be.
126
388000
3000
06:56
But right now it's in dealing with our own people,
127
391000
2000
06:58
our own teams who are doing the creating. So, to my story.
128
393000
4000
07:03
The idea of people-work is what we work with here,
129
398000
3000
07:06
and I have to make a bond with my designers when we're creating BMWs.
130
401000
4000
07:10
We have to have a shared intimacy, a shared vision --
131
405000
3000
07:13
that means we have to work as one family;
132
408000
2000
07:15
we have to understand ourselves that way.
133
410000
2000
07:17
There's good times; there's interesting times;
134
412000
3000
07:20
and there's some stress times too.
135
415000
2000
07:22
You want to do cars, you've got to go outside.
136
417000
2000
07:24
You've got to do cars in the rain; you've got to do cars in the snow.
137
419000
3000
07:27
That's, by the way, is a presentation we made to our board of directors.
138
422000
3000
07:30
We haul their butts out in the snow, too. You want to know cars outside?
139
425000
3000
07:33
Well, you've got to stand outside to do this.
140
428000
2000
07:35
And because these are artists, they have very artistic temperaments.
141
430000
5000
07:40
All right? Now one thing about art is, art is discovery,
142
435000
5000
07:45
and art is discovering yourself through your art. Right?
143
440000
3000
07:48
And one thing about cars is we're all a little bit like Pygmalion,
144
443000
4000
07:52
we are completely in love with our own creations.
145
447000
3000
07:55
This is one of my favorite paintings, it really describes our relationship with cars.
146
450000
5000
08:00
This is sick beyond belief.
147
455000
2000
08:02
(Laughter)
148
457000
2000
08:04
But because of this, the intimacy with which we work together as a team
149
459000
4000
08:08
takes on a new dimension, a new meaning.
150
463000
3000
08:12
We have a shared center; we have a shared focus --
151
467000
3000
08:15
that car stays at the middle of all our relationships.
152
470000
4000
08:19
And it's my job, in the competitive process, to narrow this down.
153
474000
5000
08:24
I heard today about Joseph's death genes
154
479000
4000
08:28
that have to go in and kill cell reproduction.
155
483000
3000
08:31
You know, that's what I have to do sometimes.
156
486000
3000
08:34
We start out with 10 cars; we narrow it down to five cars,
157
489000
3000
08:37
down to three cars, down to two cars, down to one car,
158
492000
3000
08:40
and I'm in the middle of that killing, basically.
159
495000
4000
08:44
Someone's love, someone's baby.
160
499000
2000
08:46
This is very difficult, and you have to have a bond with your team
161
501000
3000
08:49
that permits you to do this, because their life is wrapped up in that too.
162
504000
4000
08:53
They've got that gene infected in them as well,
163
508000
3000
08:56
and they want that to live, more than anything else.
164
511000
4000
09:00
Well, this project, Deep Blue, put me in contact with my team
165
515000
3000
09:03
in a way that I never expected, and I want to pass it on to you,
166
518000
3000
09:06
because I want you to reflect on this, perhaps in your own relationships.
167
521000
2000
09:08
We wanted to a do a car which was a complete leap of faith for BMW.
168
523000
5000
09:13
We wanted to do a team which was so removed from the way we'd done it,
169
528000
4000
09:17
that I only had a phone number that connected me to them.
170
532000
3000
09:20
So, what we did was: instead of having a staff of artists that are just your wrist,
171
535000
5000
09:25
we decided to free up a team of creative designers and engineers
172
540000
4000
09:29
to find out what's the successor to the SUV phenomenon in America.
173
544000
4000
09:33
This is 1996 we did this project. And so we sent them off with this team name,
174
548000
6000
09:39
Deep Blue. Now many people know Deep Blue from IBM --
175
554000
2000
09:41
we actually stole it from them because we figured
176
556000
2000
09:43
if anybody read our faxes they'd think we're talking about computers.
177
558000
3000
09:46
It turned out it was quite clever because Deep Blue,
178
561000
2000
09:48
in a company like BMW, has a hook -- "Deep Blue," wow, cool name.
179
563000
4000
09:52
So people get wrapped up in it. And we took a team of designers,
180
567000
3000
09:55
and we sent them off to America. And we gave them a budget,
181
570000
3000
09:58
what we thought was a set of deliverables,
182
573000
2000
10:00
a timetable, and nothing else.
183
575000
2000
10:02
Like I said, I just had a phone number that connected me to them.
184
577000
2000
10:04
And a group of engineers worked in Germany,
185
579000
3000
10:07
and the idea was they would work separately
186
582000
2000
10:09
on this problem of what's the successor to the SUV.
187
584000
3000
10:12
They would come together, compare notes. Then they would work apart,
188
587000
3000
10:15
come together, and they would produce together
189
590000
2000
10:17
a monumental set of diverse opinions that didn't pollute each other's ideas --
190
592000
4000
10:21
but at the same time came together and resolved the problems.
191
596000
3000
10:24
Hopefully, really understand the customer at its heart,
192
599000
3000
10:27
where the customer is, live with them in America. So -- sent the team off,
193
602000
6000
10:33
and actually something different happened. They went other places.
194
608000
4000
10:37
(Laughter)
195
612000
3000
10:40
They disappeared, quite honestly, and all I got was postcards.
196
615000
6000
10:47
Now, I got some postcards of these guys in Las Vegas,
197
622000
3000
10:50
and I got some postcards of these guys in the Grand Canyon,
198
625000
2000
10:52
and I got these postcards of Niagara Falls,
199
627000
2000
10:54
and pretty soon they're in New York, and I don't know where else.
200
629000
3000
10:57
And I'm telling myself, "This is going to be a great car,
201
632000
4000
11:01
they're doing research that I've never even thought about before."
202
636000
5000
11:06
Right? And they decided that instead of, like, having a studio,
203
641000
7000
11:13
and six or seven apartments,
204
648000
3000
11:16
it was cheaper to rent Elizabeth Taylor's ex-house in Malibu.
205
651000
4000
11:20
And -- at least they told me it was her house,
206
655000
3000
11:23
I guess it was at one time, she had a party there or something.
207
658000
3000
11:26
But anyway, this was the house, and they all lived there.
208
661000
5000
11:31
Now this is 24/7 living, half-a-dozen people who'd left their --
209
666000
5000
11:36
some had left their wives behind and families behind,
210
671000
3000
11:39
and they literally lived in this house
211
674000
2000
11:41
for the entire six months the project was in America,
212
676000
3000
11:44
but the first three months were the most intensive.
213
679000
3000
11:47
And one of the young women in the project,
214
682000
2000
11:49
she was a fantastic lady, she actually built her room in the bathroom.
215
684000
4000
11:53
The bathroom was so big, she built the bed over the bathtub --
216
688000
3000
11:56
it's quite fascinating.
217
691000
2000
11:58
On the other hand, I didn't know anything about this. OK?
218
693000
4000
12:02
Nothing. This is all going on, and all I'm getting is postcards
219
697000
3000
12:05
of these guys in Las Vegas, or whatever,
220
700000
2000
12:07
saying, "Don't worry Chris, this is really going to be good." OK?
221
702000
3000
12:10
So my concept of what a design studio was probably --
222
705000
3000
12:13
I wasn't up to speed on where these guys were.
223
708000
3000
12:16
However, the engineers back in Munich
224
711000
3000
12:19
had taken on this kind of Newtonian solution,
225
714000
4000
12:23
and they were trying to find how many cup holders
226
718000
2000
12:25
can dance on the head of a pin, and, you know,
227
720000
2000
12:27
these really serious questions that are confronting the modern consumer.
228
722000
5000
12:32
And one was hoping that these two teams would get together,
229
727000
3000
12:35
and this collusion of incredible creativity,
230
730000
2000
12:37
under these incredible surroundings,
231
732000
2000
12:39
and these incredibly stressed-out engineers,
232
734000
3000
12:42
would create some incredible solutions.
233
737000
3000
12:45
Well, what I didn't know was, and what we found out was --
234
740000
3000
12:48
these guys, they can't even like talk to each other under those conditions.
235
743000
5000
12:53
You get a divergence of Newtonian and quantum thinking at that point,
236
748000
4000
12:57
you have a split in your dialog that is so deep, and so far,
237
752000
6000
13:03
that they cannot bring this together at all.
238
758000
4000
13:07
And so we had our first meeting, after three months, in Tiburon,
239
762000
4000
13:11
which is just up the road from here -- you know Tiburon?
240
766000
3000
13:14
And the idea was after the first three months of this independent research
241
769000
3000
13:17
they would present it all to Dr. Goschel --
242
772000
2000
13:19
who is now my boss, and at that time he was co-mentor on the project --
243
774000
3000
13:22
and they would present their results.
244
777000
2000
13:24
We would see where we were going,
245
779000
2000
13:26
we would see the first indication of what could be
246
781000
2000
13:28
the successive phenomenon to the SUV in America.
247
783000
4000
13:32
And so I had these ideas in my head, that this is going to be great.
248
787000
3000
13:35
I mean, I'm going to see so much work, it's so intense --
249
790000
2000
13:37
I know probably Las Vegas meant a lot about it,
250
792000
3000
13:40
and I'm not really sure where the Grand Canyon came in either --
251
795000
2000
13:42
but somehow all this is going to come together,
252
797000
3000
13:45
and I'm going to see some really great product.
253
800000
2000
13:47
So we went to Tiburon, after three months,
254
802000
2000
13:49
and the team had gotten together the week before,
255
804000
3000
13:52
many days ahead of time.
256
807000
3000
13:55
The engineers flew over, and designers got together with them,
257
810000
4000
13:59
and they put their presentation together.
258
814000
3000
14:02
Well, it turns out that the engineers hadn't done anything.
259
817000
6000
14:08
And they hadn't done anything because --
260
823000
3000
14:11
kind of, like in car business, engineers are there to solve problems,
261
826000
5000
14:16
and we were asking them to create a problem.
262
831000
3000
14:19
And the engineers were waiting for the designers to say,
263
834000
3000
14:22
"This is the problem that we've created, now help us solve it."
264
837000
4000
14:26
And they couldn't talk about it. So what happened was,
265
841000
4000
14:30
the engineers showed up with nothing.
266
845000
3000
14:33
And the engineers told the designers,
267
848000
2000
14:35
"If you go in with all your stuff, we'll walk out,
268
850000
4000
14:39
we'll walk right out of the project."
269
854000
3000
14:42
So I didn't know any of this,
270
857000
2000
14:44
and we got a presentation that had an agenda, looked like this.
271
859000
2000
14:46
There was a whole lot of dialog.
272
861000
3000
14:49
We spent four hours being told all about vocabulary
273
864000
3000
14:52
that needs to be built between engineers and designers.
274
867000
4000
14:56
And here I'm expecting at any moment, "OK, they're going to turn the page,
275
871000
3000
14:59
and I'm going to see the cars, I'm going to see the sketches,
276
874000
2000
15:01
I'm going to see maybe some idea of where it's going."
277
876000
3000
15:04
Dialog kept on going, with mental maps of words, and pretty soon
278
879000
5000
15:09
it was becoming obvious that instead of being dazzled with brilliance,
279
884000
3000
15:12
I was seriously being baffled with bullshit.
280
887000
4000
15:16
And if you can imagine what this is like,
281
891000
2000
15:18
to have these months of postcard indication of how great this team is working,
282
893000
4000
15:22
and they're out there spending all this money, and they're learning,
283
897000
2000
15:24
and they're doing all this stuff.
284
899000
3000
15:27
I went fucking ballistic, right? I went nuts.
285
902000
6000
15:33
You can probably remember Tiburon, it used to look like this.
286
908000
5000
15:38
After four hours of this, I stood up, and I took this team apart.
287
913000
5000
15:43
I screamed at them, I yelled at them, "What the hell are you doing?
288
918000
4000
15:47
You're letting me down, you're my designers,
289
922000
2000
15:49
you're supposed to be the creative ones,
290
924000
2000
15:51
what the hell is going on around here?"
291
926000
2000
15:53
It was probably one of my better tirades, I have some good ones,
292
928000
3000
15:56
but this was probably one of my better ones. And I went into these people;
293
931000
3000
15:59
how could they take BMW's money,
294
934000
2000
16:01
how could they have a holiday for three months and produce nothing, nothing?
295
936000
6000
16:07
Because of course they didn't tell us that they had three station wagons
296
942000
5000
16:12
full of drawings, model concepts, pictures -- everything I wanted,
297
947000
7000
16:19
they'd locked up in the cars, because they had shown solidarity with the engineers --
298
954000
5000
16:24
and they'd decided not to show me anything,
299
959000
3000
16:27
in order to give the chance for problem solving a chance to start,
300
962000
3000
16:30
because they hadn't realized, of course,
301
965000
2000
16:32
that they couldn't do problem creating.
302
967000
2000
16:34
So we went to lunch --
303
969000
2000
16:36
(Laughter)
304
971000
5000
16:41
And I've got to tell you, this was one seriously quiet lunch.
305
976000
3000
16:44
The engineers all sat at one end of the table,
306
979000
2000
16:46
the designers and I sat at the other end of the table, really quiet.
307
981000
3000
16:49
And I was just fucking furious, furious. OK?
308
984000
7000
16:56
Probably because they had all the fun and I didn't, you know.
309
991000
2000
16:58
That's what you get furious about right?
310
993000
2000
17:00
And somebody asked me about Catherine, my wife, you know,
311
995000
2000
17:02
did she fly out with me or something?
312
997000
2000
17:04
I said, "No," and it triggered a set of thoughts about my wife.
313
999000
4000
17:08
And I recalled that when Catherine and I were married,
314
1003000
4000
17:12
the priest gave a very nice sermon, and he said something very important.
315
1007000
5000
17:17
He said, "Love is not selfish," he said,
316
1012000
3000
17:20
"Love does not mean counting how many times I say, 'I love you.'
317
1015000
4000
17:24
It doesn't mean you had sex this many times this month,
318
1019000
3000
17:27
and it's two times less than last month,
319
1022000
2000
17:29
so that means you don't love me as much.
320
1024000
2000
17:31
Love is not selfish." And I thought about this, and I thought,
321
1026000
5000
17:36
"You know, I'm not showing love here. I'm seriously not showing love.
322
1031000
8000
17:44
I'm in the air, I'm in the air without trust.
323
1039000
4000
17:48
This cannot be. This cannot be that I'm expecting a certain number of sketches,
324
1043000
5000
17:53
and to me that's my quantification method for qualifying a team.
325
1048000
5000
17:58
This cannot be."
326
1053000
2000
18:00
So I told them this story. I said, "Guys, I'm thinking about something here,
327
1055000
3000
18:03
this isn't right. I can't have a relationship with you guys
328
1058000
4000
18:07
based on a premise that is a quantifiable one.
329
1062000
3000
18:10
Based on a dictate premise that says, 'I'm a boss, you do what I say, without trust.'"
330
1065000
8000
18:18
I said "This can't be."
331
1073000
2000
18:20
Actually, we all broke down into tears, to be quite honest about it,
332
1075000
6000
18:26
because they still could not tell me how much frustration they had built up
333
1081000
5000
18:31
inside of them, not being able to show me what I wanted,
334
1086000
4000
18:35
and merely having to ask me to trust them that it would come.
335
1090000
5000
18:40
And I think we felt much closer that day,
336
1095000
3000
18:43
we cut a lot of strings that didn't need to be there,
337
1098000
3000
18:46
and we forged the concept for what real team and creativity is all about.
338
1101000
5000
18:51
We put the car back at the center of our thoughts, and we put love,
339
1106000
4000
18:55
I think, truly back into the center of the process.
340
1110000
4000
18:59
By the way, that team went on to create six different concepts
341
1114000
3000
19:02
for the next model of what would be the proposal
342
1117000
3000
19:05
for the next generation after SUVs in America.
343
1120000
3000
19:08
One of those was the idea of a crossover coupes --
344
1123000
4000
19:12
you see it downstairs, the X Coupe -- they had a lot of fun with that.
345
1127000
5000
19:17
It was the rendition of our motorcycle,
346
1132000
3000
19:20
the GS, as Carl Magnusson says, "brute-iful,"
347
1135000
4000
19:24
as the idea of what could be a motorcycle, if you add two more wheels.
348
1139000
5000
19:29
And so, in conclusion, my lesson that I wanted to pass on to you,
349
1144000
4000
19:33
was this one here. I'm also going to steal a little quote out of "Little Prince."
350
1148000
4000
19:37
There's a lot to be said about trust and love,
351
1152000
3000
19:40
if you know that those two words are synonymous for design.
352
1155000
3000
19:43
I had a very, very meaningful relationship with my team that day,
353
1158000
4000
19:47
and it's stayed that way ever since.
354
1162000
2000
19:49
And I hope that you too find that there's more to design,
355
1164000
4000
19:53
and more towards the art of the design, than doing it yourself.
356
1168000
4000
19:57
It's true that the trust and the love, that makes it worthwhile.
357
1172000
4000
20:01
Thanks so much.
358
1176000
2000
20:03
(Applause)
359
1178000
2000
Translated by Jenny Zurawell
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chris Bangle - Car designerCar design is a ubiquitous but often overlooked art form. As chief of design for the BMW Group, Chris Bangle has overseen cars that have been seen the world over, including BMW 7 Series and the Z4 roadster.
Why you should listen
American designer Chris Bangle understands that it can be difficult to see a car in terms of Art with a capital A. As such, he separates his work into issues of "automobiles" (unemotional products, causing problems such as pollution and congestion) and "car-iness" (an expansion of the human, and ultimately a truly artistic expression). Satisfying the tensions between these problems -- and the tensions between engineers and designers -- is, for him, the essence of his work.
Offering radical forms and ideas, Bangle has been a polarizing figure within the industry; he has overseen all of the brands within the BMW family, including Mini and Rolls-Royce. In 2009, Bangle left BMW to pursue his own personal design interests and develop his consulting firm, Chris Bangle Associates.
Chris Bangle | Speaker | TED.com