Seoul looks like a modern mix of classical European and traditional elements in its exterior, and it fits, says Chris Bangle, arguably the most influential auto designer from BMW Group.

Speaking with The Korea Herald for the iDEA Herald Design Forum in Seoul on Wednesday, the industry lexicon for controversial yet popular car designs said his impression about the city is “refined” with a “high sense of beauty.”

“Looking at the way Koreans dress, the locals have high sense of beauty and the buildings seem to have imported European style propped with a Korean twist,” Bangle said.

The mastermind behind best selling BMWs attributed Seoul’s modernity to the different style of Hangeul fonts, or Korean alphabet, seen all over the city.

“Some of the language calligraphy is done wonderfully, I don’t speak it but I can tell it’s systemic and has been created by a designer,” he said.

Bangle, now a consultant for Samsung Electronics, declined to elaborate on his collaboration with the Korean company.

Bangle is one of the top designers in the city to foster discussions about industrial designs at the iDEA Herald Design Forum which kicked off its two-day run at Hotel Shilla.

The forum began with presentation tournaments for college students Wednesday. The second day runs three sessions from nine to seven, participated in by big names including Martin Lindstrom, Chris Bangle, Karim Rashid, Simon Anholt and Kim Young-se.

Of the three discussion sessions on the second day, Bangle joins panel discussion by Karim Rashid, Pyo Hyun-myung, president of mobile business group at KT Corp., and Chung Kook-hyun, president of Samsung Art & Design Institute about design issues companies would have to think about to attract highly educated consumers with an ever more sophisticated sense of style.

Bangle, who will deliver a 20-minute speech on Thursday, plans to introduce the concept of “three red lights” people should remember in any creative process.

“First and second red lights people encounter are the red light in traffic and the red light in drag racing. Designers have boundaries they’re supposed to stop for and they need to accept dogma of rules based on those boundaries,” Bangle explains. The third red light he refers to is red light districts, or forbidden areas designers sometimes need to enter to create something different.

“The talk about three red lights will be anecdotal and it will explain things people often don’t see as important in the process of design,” Bangle said.

Touching up on his exit from BMW Group in 2009, Bangle said his let-go from the German carmaker may have been long but was a win-win process for him and the company.

“My wife and I had planned to leave when we both turned 50 so I began to talk to BMW about leaving but I hadn’t been able to do it for years,” he said. “But all things considered, those two years that took me let the team grow and gave me time to prepare other things.”

After 28 years as an automobile designer, Bangle left the industry for his own firm called Chris Bangle and Associates based in Italy.

Bangle began his auto designer career with Opel, then Fiat, and spent 17 years with BMW as the first American to assume the role of design director at the German carmaker.

By Cynthia J. Kim (cynthiak@heraldcorp.com)