Gazing from windows of my childhood, my fire for automotive passion sparkled as I was exposed to European and Asian cars from my father’s car park. Born in Korea; raised in New Zealand; later studying automotive design in United States; and lastly interning in Germany and China, I understand the value of cultural diversity and its strength in automobile industry. Perhaps, this is why my attitude as a designer align with New Zealand phrase “where we made do and improvised with what we could find in the shed”, or in simple terms, a gung-ho “give it a go” attitude.
Personally, designing automobile is equivalent to packaging various experience into a physical form. Like a curator, I curate cultural, functional and emotional experience that would appeal to people around us.
Hence my design process emphasizes research. Literatures, interviews, simulation and personal experiences provide the initial conceptual foundation. I would then integrate and break down various ideas to identify and collate essential elements that are imperative to the overarching concept. These elements would form each surface and lines that would need to satisfy my criteria in terms of aesthetics, functionality and its appeal to generate intended emotion. As a result, my designs challenge the norm and bring forth non-obvious solutions.
I believe that the most important role of an automotive designer is to continuously develop, envision and innovate car culture so that it can thrive and inspire the next generation. After all, our culture and our way of life dictates the pathways for the automotive industry. While the definition of automobile expands to EV and mobility 4.0, the automobile designers should aspire to preserve the core idea of private transport and ensure that automotive does not become obsolete from our fabric of reality.