Welcome to the special “20th Anniversary” section of Top Yacht Design. Here we present to you, day by day, the best stories, yachts and personalities we have covered in these 20 years of Top Yacht Design, from 2006 to the present.
Taken from Top Yacht Design No. 1/2015 pp. 56-62.
Chris Bangle: the car guru sets sail
World-renowned designer partners up with Sanlorenzo.
It was always going to happen. Sooner or later, a car designer was going to make the leap to yachts. The fact that the designer . in question happens to be Chris Bangle and the yard Sanlorenzo, however, is enough to make boat lovers rub their hands with glee. Chris Bangle is, after all, one of the most celebrated designers in the world. He began his career in Fiat (we owe the Coupé to his skills) and then worked with BMW for 17 years, literally revolutionising the whole concept of the car (think the Z3, Z4 and Z8 and even the “new” Mini). In 2009, the time was finally ripe for him to follow his gut and tackle his own 36 degree concept of design. The result was Chris Bangle Associates. We met him in Borgata Gorrea Clavesana, in Le Langhe, Italy, where he set up both home and studio.
“This was an abandoned farmhouse complex. It took a lot of imagination to see what it could become”, Bangle says, looking around at what he has turned into a unique creative hub. This is where he lives and, most importantly, develops his ideas. It is the headquarters of his company and also a nurturing ground for the talented interns that come to live and work there for short bursts of time. Because Bangle feels that everyone working on a project has to be more than just involved in it, they have to be part of it.
“When a client comes to us, we set up a full week of non-stop brainstorming “voodoworkshops” from which we emerge absolutely exhausted but with very clear ideas,” he explains. Bangle is adamant that thought go into every single object, regardless of whether it is a car, a boat or a swimming pool. What counts with him is that people can identify with it. “The designer’s real job is ensuring people say ‘It’s me’ abo ut inanimate objects,” he continues. “The real challenge in design is involving people,” he says. By which he means doing things together, becoming an integral part not just of the design but its realisation.
“The thing I hate most is seeing ‘designed for.. . A design isn’t for you,but with you. It has to be something that you can completely immerse yourself and identify with.’ It should come as no great surprise therefore that Chris Bangle Associates also embraces production and industrial processes. This was what spurred Massimo Perotti to commission the sludio lo define the look and feel of not just the Sanlorenzos of the coming decade but also the new Amelia yard building alongside the existing one.
The story goes that when Perotti and Bangle met, the American put a spinning top on the table and spun it, halfway through its spin it flipped over. “Sanlorenzo has to be like this top,” he told the Italian. “It has to keep going in the same direction but revolutionise our perspective also.” They signed their partnership agreement a few hours later. Bangle is conscious of the differences between cars and boats, but also points out that “there is a relationship between a luxury vessel and a car. Both are the projection of the soul of their owners. But while in the case of the car, the context is limited, with the boat the only limit is the surface of the sea.”
With regard to his involvement with SanLorenzo, he adds: “We’ll work on both the design of the boats and on developing innovative production processes. We intend getting Sanlorenzo started in a whole new phase of its career and ensure it makes a leap in quality,” concludes Bangle. Now all that remains is for us to wait and and see what that leap produces.
by Matteo Zaccagnino photo Giovanni Malgarini
