Students Win Design Placements With Vauxhall/Opel

GENEVA - March 3, 2011: Students from Coventry University in the UK and the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Milan, Italy have been awarded placements at Vauxhall/Opel’s design centre as winners of the Car Design News-Vauxhall/Opel interactive design competition.

Chiayuan Lu from Coventry University is the winner of the interior design phase of the competition, and Victor Uribe from the IED is the winner of the exterior design phase. Their success was announced at a ceremony held today on the Vauxhall/Opel stand during the second press day of the Geneva motor show.

The central theme of the competition was a ‘Lounge in Motion’, and asked students to design a car interior, and subsequently an exterior, which embodied the brand’s ‘Sculptural artistry meets German precision’ language of design. The competition was open to students studying full time in any design discipline at a college in Europe and attracted over 460 registrations with a total of 898 submissions of work and some 1250 comments.

The prize for each student is the award of an internship at Vauxhall/Opel’s European Design Studio in Rüsselsheim, Germany. They will work alongside the company’s talented design team and gain valuable experience as they embark on their careers as car designers.

The judges were impressed with many of the entries to the competition but, for the interior, felt that Chiayuan’s work really stood out. The Chinese student, studying on the MA course in Vehicle Interior Design at Coventry, created a ‘Lounge to be together with your child’. His work features an interior which is focused around the needs of a young child, and includes a system that allows a baby’s pushchair to seamlessly integrate into the car and become the seat.

Elizabeth Wetzel, Director of Interior Design for Vauxhall said: “Chiayuan created not just a design but an experience, by leveraging Vauxhall’s ‘flexible and functional’ brand attributes and engaging all the senses via animation, digital modelling and sound. An impressive execution!”

“He understood the target audience perfectly because, as a young dad, he was the target audience,” commented Guy Bird, one of the other judges. Anne Asensio, VP of Design Experience at competition sponsor Dassault Systèmes, said his work was “clearly ahead of the game”.

For the exterior, Victor Uribe, studying transportation design at the IED, drew high praise for both winning this phase and being shortlisted for the interiors phase as well. “Victor's innovative exploration of the Vauxhall brand design theme was inspiring,” said Wetzel of his work. “The exterior form language for his 'lounge in motion' captured the emotional side of our brand.” Eric Gallina, editor of Car Design News, added: “Great design all round, and really impressive communication of ideas.”

The interactive design competition is a collaborative venture between Car Design News and Vauxhall/Opel to explore how online and social media tools could be used to improve the design process and create greater exposure for design students’ work. The competition ran in two phases – interior design from October to December 2010, and exterior design through January and February 2011.

The two winners fought off strong competition from the other finalists, who were: Giacomo Pierin, also from IED Turin, in the interior design phase; and Jadir Minutti studying at the Istituto D’Arte Applicata e Design (IAAD) Italy, and Lina Ginkute studying at Creapole, France, who is the only woman among the finalists, in the exterior phase.

Xabier Albizu, a second year student in industrial design at the Mondragon University in Spain, was highlighted by the judges as “one to watch” in the future.

All the finalists’ work will be on display in the Zafira Lounge on the Vauxhall/Opel stand at the Geneva motor show until 13 March 2011. Or visit the competition website www.cardesigncontest.com to see these and all the other entries.

The competition was supported by sponsors Dassault Systèmes and Dinamica by Miko, both being innovative in their endorsement of this new way of tapping student design talent and of gaining feedback from some of the buyers of the next generation of cars.