Audi to Announce Winner of Innovation Award at Design Days Dubai 2017

Audi has disclosed that it will be announcing the winner of the Audi Innovation Award at Design Days Dubai 2017. There are now only four more weeks to go till the deadline for the submissions, and the contest has already drawn significant interest. The ‘Audi Innovation Award’ is meant to encourage young designers to conduct more design research and to come up with innovative ideas that might change the future. Thus, the design will act as a design and technology industry motivator in the GCC and Levant regions for design innovation.
Audi Middle East had launched the contest at the Dubai Design Week back in October as part of its fifth year of partnership with Design Days Dubai. In their submissions, designers are expected to highlight innovative design solutions that can cause ‘significant positive change’ based on the theme ‘Alternative’. The award will recognize outstanding achievement, while celebrating the exchange of ideas and investing in the designers of tomorrow to thus create a future family of change makers.
Commenting on the interest that the award has drawn, Cyril Zammit, Fair Director of Design Days Dubai said that he was impressed to see the amount of talented designers who have registered their interest in submitting their ideas for the Audi Innovation Award. He is expecting to see some fantastic creativity in the designs that are submitted, with just four weeks to go.

Enrico Atanasio, Brand Director of Audi Middle East said that the judging panel will meet in the month of January to review all the entries and choose the winning three innovative designers. These designers will then be invited to make a model of their idea to be shown at Design Days Dubai in March 2017.
Audi opted for the theme ‘Alternative’ as it is directly related to Audi’s strategy towards ‘Electrification’ and forward thinking and highlights the achievements Audi has made with regard to alternative energy vehicles. Designers are expected to integrate existing design solutions into new facets of everyday things. One example drawn from the automotive industry is that of the transformation of the combustion engine into electric engine in order to suit the environment better.

The Audi Innovation Award invites designers to present innovative solutions that observe and improve upon any of 5 key areas of focus: lifestyle, healthcare, mobility, education and urban public spaces, such as streets, plazas, parks and their furniture.

Designers can be inspired by nature or by manmade objects and the winning design will best integrate an existing solution to be used in exciting new ways. The submission must include a developed idea that comprises application, materiality, durability, target user, and lifespan. All designs must be sustainable from an environmental point of view and involve careful approach to energy use.