Beijing Designers Night

This year's Designer's Night took place on April 21, the second evening of the recent Beijing International Auto Show. Hosted by Autodesk and supported by Car Design News, the event took place in Beijing's famous northeastern 798 art factory district and attracted over 200 designers and design leaders from around the world, from well-known international companies as well as the design leaders from the Chinese automotive design industry.

As the world's leading 2D and 3D digital design and management software provider, Autodesk used the event to showcase their latest modeling and visualization software that help fulfill the dreams of designers to reality.

The event at the 798 art district was a unique artistic environment. The former munitions manufacturing hall - now an art gallery - still showed the marks of China's 20th century industrialization process, with slogans on the high vaulted roof and machine tools and lathes dotted around the floor. This created a unique blend between East and West, traditional and modern aspects of manufacturing.

During the drinks and lavish buffet dinner, Autodesk launched the latest version of AliasStudio and Showcase, the 2009 release. Autodesk's automotive designer David Bentley demonstrated the 2D digital sketching capabilities of the software, showing a seemingly endless stream of creative inspiration on-screen with the ingenious application of the AliasStudio 2009 version to an appreciative audience of young Chinese designers.

Roberto Piatti, president of Italian design company Torino Design, had a keynote presentation on the focus of the local Chinese automotive design industry to expand. He presented Torino Design's work for Chery Automotive, with a talk on how the new Faria model was inspired by the 2008 Beijing Olympics' Mascots, ingeniously moving from cartoon characters to a very attractive range of seven different cars.

The massive number of new car launches at this year's Beijing Show was the talk of the night. China Great Wall brand introduced its own range of branded models; Chery launched a massive 29 new models; Guangzhou Honda independent research & development group launched a concept car, while Shanghai Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen also increased their focus with the new Bora and Lavida models.

This indicates that China's automotive designers are growing in importance and China's automobile industry will increasingly focus on more innovative designs. Shanghai Automotive director of digital design, Mr. Yan Ting, who attended the dinner, said: "The growth in China's automobile design is at the forefront of the automotive design world-wide; it is therefore necessary that we must practice and improve the development of digital design processes. Only with the right processes can creativity and inspiration create design that conveys the intent of the design philosophy throughout all stages."

Autodesk China's global account manager, Mr. Teni En, added that "... being able to create unique, personalized and innovative vehicle design is the only way of enhancing the competitiveness of a brand. Autodesk offers the most advanced vehicle concept design solutions, and is willing to providing the most advanced digital innovation support and the most powerful technical support to China's car design industry."

Related Articles:
Beijing Motor Show 2008 Trends Overview
Beijing Motor Show 2008 Photo Gallery
Beijing Motor Show 2008 Highlights

By CDN team