Author

Chris Bangle
Perspective shift
Chris Bangle has spent over three decades shaping the visual language of some of the most influential automotive brands, from Opel and Fiat to Alfa Romeo and BMW, where he served as chief designer during one of the most radical moments in the company’s history. Beyond the automotive industry, his practice has progressively expanded into a broader reflection on design, authorship, and meaning, leading to the founding of Chris Bangle Associates S.r.l., a studio working across design, design management, and strategic thinking.

On the occasion of the documentary Chris Bangle Associates, The World Seen Through Objects, which I directed, I had the opportunity to enter the studio’s imaginative ecosystem and closely observe its creative process. The film follows the birth of the Inanimatti, a constellation of animated characters emerging from everyday objects, revealing a way of thinking where form, emotion, and narrative constantly overlap.

What emerges is a clear shift in perspective. Objects are no longer passive outcomes of function but active carriers of meaning, capable of suggesting emotions, intentions, and relationships. This perspective shift is not merely a storytelling device but a design attitude that questions how we look at things and how things, in turn, look back at us. It opens up a broader reflection on the role of the designer and on the fragile, often emotional bond between humans and the objects that populate their lives.

Photo: Lorenzo Morandi
Conversation: Lorenzo Morandi, Chris Bangle


LM:
Animating an object is not a conventional path within design, which often follows more linear and codified processes. What led you to introduce this way of thinking into your practice, and how has it expanded the possibilities of your work?

CB:
In my personal life, I started doing cartoon sketches at school and I've always liked animation. I was never satisfied with the sterile design approach of modernism, where everything is reduced to the minimum. These standard canons such as take away everything and what remains is the perfect design… for this reason for me cars are very interesting, because they still leave you room to introduce elements of personality. You can always carry objects to a higher metalevel.

LM:
Your critique of modernism is both striking and intriguing. When design aims to reduce things to their essence, something is inevitably left behind. How do you think designers can navigate the difficulty of distinguishing what is truly superfluous from what operates on a different, less functional but equally meaningful level?

CB:
In the world, we often forget that we pay a price, in terms of sensitivity: our ability to always be surprised, our ability to be emotionally connected with something, even if we can't describe it. Like a character: you don’t need to always add eyes and a mouth to see a face, or an expression, and understand if this object feels joy or sadness, or keeps a secret.

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