Indian among Michelin Challenge Design Upcycle winners

NE NEWS SERVICE

GREENVILLE (SC), July 18

The winners of the 2020 Michelin Challenge Design global competition have been announced on Thursday. Challenge Design is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and is a featured programme of the Movin’On Summit, the world’s premier gathering for sustainable mobility.

The theme, Upcycle, challenged artists, designers, engineers, architects, and creatives worldwide to take inspiration or elements from previously-honored Challenge Design entries and create an Upcycled design that added environmental, societal or economic value.

The winning teams came from Brazil, South Korea, India, and China.  Additional Upcycle Judge’s Award winners came from China, South Korea, Colombia, India, France, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Italy, and the United States.

“In addition to our timely and relevant themes, an essential part of Challenge Design’s prestige and continued success is due to the support of our jurors, who spent two days in virtual meetings to review the entries and select the winners in these extraordinary times. We are incredibly grateful for their support,” said Nick Mailhiot, chairman of the 2020 Challenge Design.

The 2020 Winners

First Place: Dayvid Almeida of Brazil for his entry, “Volkswagen MUT.E”

“It is really important to think about mobility as a complex organism that we could design for our future. The first thought about Upcycle was the idea to make something great and add the value of the solutions that nature has developed,” said Almeida.

“I am very grateful for this kind of challenge, for the importance that you give us designers to imagine the future of mobility. I think for me and for a lot of people in the auto industry, they say Michelin Challenge Design is the most important in the world. It is very important because it brings innovative solutions,” said Almeida.

Second Place: Young Jae Kim of South Korea and Dinesh Raman of India for “Fargo”

“One of the challenges in 2020 was to understand what Upcycle meant,” said Young Jae Kim.

“Part of what made this Challenge Design different was that it focused on functionality more than aesthetics. You are going to solve greater problems,” said his teammate, Dinesh Raman. The two are graduate students at the Royal College of Art in London.

“We basically felt like jurors. We switched on the projector in our classroom and went through almost all the prior entries. We thought sustainability only made sense if it had a massive impact both socially and economically,” said Raman.

“The whole process was really fun. We also took a great amount of inspiration from our memories of the “Top Gear” show in which Jeremy Clarkson had to drive through Vietnam,” said Young Jae Kim.

Third Place: Chen Mango, from China, for his entry: “Michelin Moving Space” 

“In the near future, due to high population density and limited land resources, the concept of high-density vertical cities will come true in metropolises like New York, Shanghai and other cities,” said Mango.

“Parking fees will be very high. If the private space module can be part of our house, we will never pay for parking. When we want a trip, we just need to book a sharing power module with our phone.”

Judge’s Awards

In addition to the three winners, the jurors selected the following to receive Upcycle Judge’s awards.