Engineering at the table
My chapter with BMW — German precision, lifestyle curation, and the partnership where mobility, design, and gastronomy meet.
BMW is the marque against which my lifestyle and mobility work has been measured. Unlike the spirits houses that place a cuvée at the centre of the table, or the kitchen-architecture maisons that work on the room around the cooking, BMW sits in work that is not primarily about the plate — engineering, design, and lifestyle curation in continuous conversation. The relationship has run for the better part of a decade across two anchor programmes: The Society at Enfin (2017), and the BMW i7 electrified menu at Shin'Labo (2024).
What the relationship is
BMW Malaysia and I have worked together where the marque is most at home — private hospitality, brand events, dealership-network programmes, and the curated experiences that connect mobility, design, and gastronomy in a single evening. The work has been held quietly. The marque’s discipline is restraint; the relationship has honoured that across two distinct eras and almost a decade.
What BMW brings to the table is not a culinary subject. It is a century of engineering inheritance, a recognised design vocabulary, and a contemporary lifestyle programme that asks for cross-disciplinary literacy. I have read against all three.
The Society — private dinner programme at Enfin, June – December 2017
The earliest formally documented BMW chapter is The Society — a private dinner programme at Enfin by James Won (Menara Hap Seng), held in partnership with BMW Malaysia Sdn Bhd under formal Appointment Letter dated 16 May 2017.
Programme period: 1 June 2017 – 31 December 2017. Format: eight private dinners across the seven-month engagement — four hosted by BMW Malaysia and its authorised dealers; four hosted by another event partner.
The Society follows the maison’s quiet convention. The Appointment Letter sets it plainly: minimal media, named guests held privately, the exclusivity of the evening protected. I have honoured that across both eras of the relationship.
The BMW Malaysia counterparts who carried the programme on the maison side were Han Sang Yun (Managing Director, BMW Malaysia), Thomas Senser (Finance Director), and Ariezs Khairudin (Marketing — the working point of contact). The relationship is named here at institutional level; the convention it set has travelled forward through every subsequent BMW evening.
The Society also matters for what it established. By June 2017 — three years before the formal Krug Chef’s Table programme had matured at Enfin and a year before the Tapestry × Hennessy six-senses series — BMW had already chosen Enfin as its private-dinner partner for the year. My lifestyle-curation work did not begin with the BMW i7 era. It began at Menara Hap Seng in 2017.
The BMW i7 — electrified menu at Shin’Labo, 2024
Seven years after The Society, the BMW partnership returned at the launch of the BMW i7 electric flagship. I carried the launch’s electrified menu at Shin’Labo — a programme that placed the maison’s electric-mobility chapter alongside the yōshoku room at Lalaport KL.
The programme honoured the same minimal-media discipline The Society had established: surfaced at chapter level, with the named guests and specific menus held privately per the maison’s protocol. Public framing here is restrained for that reason — the substance lives in the marque’s own record, not in mine.
What the relationship has carried
Across both eras, the BMW chapter operates in the cross-disciplinary work the lifestyle and mobility cluster demands. Mobility meets gastronomy meets design meets hospitality in a single curated experience; BMW is the marque most comfortable carrying that conversation in Malaysia.
The partnership extends into private and corporate hospitality work — events held for BMW patrons, dealership networks, corporate partners, and the wider readership the marque carries in Malaysia and the region. The discipline is restrained; private events are held privately. Eight years on from the 2017 Appointment Letter, the minimal-media convention still holds.
The lifestyle and mobility group sits at a deliberate distance from the food-led work elsewhere on this page. The work meets contemporary luxury in places that are not primarily about the plate. BMW is this group’s most weighty partnership; the chapter is about how my discipline carries into lifestyle curation, not about how food appears alongside lifestyle.
Film — BMW with James Won
Additional films
Additional film — BMW i7 × Shin’Labo
Media exposure for The Society is intentionally kept at a minimum, as part of the direction to maintain anonymity of the guests and the exclusivity of the event.
BMW Malaysia × Enfin Central Sdn Bhd Appointment Letter · 16 May 2017
Selected Press
Full archive →- BMW Malaysia × Enfin Central Sdn Bhd Appointment Letter — The Society private dinner programme Programme period 1 June – 31 December 2017 · eight private dinners 16 May 2017
*Engineering as design. Mobility as lifestyle. Cross-disciplinary curation as discipline. BMW is wider than gastronomy alone — and the chapter is held at the wider standing the marque carries.*