An Adrenalin Fuelled Judging Session Determines the Second Audi Innovation Award Winner

At an energetic and exciting judging session held at Dubai Autodrome , a prestigious panel of 7 judges from the fields of Design and Education  met to decide on the top 3 designs for the second Audi Innovation Award. After a morning of putting the Audi TT through its paces on the track, the judges sat down to debate the serious business of determining the winning design for the theme of Autonomy.  This ‘first of its kind’ award for Audi in the Middle East, is aimed at regional up and coming designers to stimulate design research and to highlight innovative ideas that will change the future. The purpose of the award is to act as a design and technology industry motivator in the GCC and Levant regions for design innovation. 

The panel of judges for the Audi Innovation Award were hand-picked by Audi Middle East together with their partners at Design Days Dubai and Dubai Design Week with one thing in common: the ways in which they have propelled innovation in and beyond their fields.

The Audi Innovation Award judges include William Knight, Managing Director and Head of Design of Art Dubai;  Brendan McGetrick, American author, Designer and Curator of Global Grad Show;  Dr. Noah Raford, Chief Operating Officer of Dubai Futures Foundation; Mitra Khoubru, Co-founder of Dubai-based Pink Tank; Salem Al Qassimi, Professor of Design, Founder of Fikra, Designer and Entrepreneur;  Amer Aldour, Founder of inter.act, his own interactive design studio in Dubai; Aisha Alsager, Managing Director of AGi Architects from Kuwait; Mohammad Saeed Al-Shehhi, Chief Operating Officer of Dubai Design District (d3), Cris Romento, Idea Creator and Design Innovator at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Hala Fadel, Founder of Leap Ventures, Sass Brown, Founding Dean of the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI)  and Enrico Atanasio, Brand Director of Audi Middle East.

When hearing the words “Autonomy” and “Innovation”, William Knight, Managing Director and Head of Design of the Art Dubai Group, said that both are linked by technology.

For him innovation is a route to the market and a way of introducing new products and services. Autonomy is a component of innovation, which optimizes the experience of those products and services.

The theme for the second Audi Innovation Award was announced at Design Days Dubai in March this year and entries closed on 1st October 2017. This time the brand with the four rings in the Middle East received over 100 hundred submissions to their website https:/audiinnovationaward.com. 54 of these entries were approved to meet the criteria of the award and the final 15 were taken for ultimate selection at the judging event itself.

The winning three shortlisted candidates will be given $2,500 to present their concept model as part of Dubai Design Week 2017. The prizes to the winning designer of the Audi Innovation Award will include a trophy and a trip to the Audi factory in Ingolstadt, Germany to experience the automotive design journey at their company headquarters. In addition, Audi Middle East will award $25,000 worth of consultancy to cover items such as IP registration, legal counselling and business development. The progressive automotive company will work closely with their partners at Design Days Dubai and Dubai Design Week to provide design advice and mentoring to ensure the winning design is protected and given every opportunity for further development.