Winners of Kia 'My Style, My Design' Chinese design contest announced

The winners of Kia's ‘My Style, My Design' design competition have been announced at a ceremony at Beijing's Yue Art Museum.

This second annual event saw the number of universities involved rise from 40 to 86 with over 500 projects submitted which the organizing committee whittled down to just 30 finalists.

Shangdong Transportation College student Du Wenchang's 'Honglin' project was presented with the award for first place by Seon-Ho Youn, vice president of Kia Design Center. His project was a two-seater sport electric vehicle concept inspired by the Tang and Song girl's headdress.

Shu Ao's 'Willow' project picked up the award for Best Innovation Concept as well as the Judges' Recommendation Award for the vehicle concept. Inspired by a willow branch fluttering in the wind, the flowing features lines are designed to make its body slim and dynamic.

Aside from the two main awards there were 10 individual awards, and this month the winning students will head to Korea to take part in a workshop led by the carmaker's design team.

The 10 individual winners are:

Best Exterior Design Du Wenchang
Best Innovation Concept  Shu Ao
Best Luxury Concept Wu Yang
Best New Technology Design Du Haibing
Best Environmental Concept Yang Yang
Best Lifestyle Design Guan Jiazhen
Best Color and Material Concept Wang Peihan
Best Future Car Design Lizhi Yi
Best Production Car Shalongrui Chen
Best Crossover Vehicle Chen Peng
Best Detailed Design Mo Honglei
Best Chinese Traditional Design Sheng Haibo

After the ceremony, competition judge and deputy director of Beijing Industrial Design Promotion Center Song Weizu told Car Design News: "The Kia automobile design competition provides a professional exhibition platform for the future training of Chinese automobile design talent.

"As a global automobile company Kia will show its excellent brand culture and forward-thinking ideas through organized automobile design competitions. This time more than 500 contestants showed Chinese students use unique automobile design philosophy in their works combined with the Kia 'simple aesthetics' language perfectly. I firmly believe the best of them will become the future Peter Schreyers, but with 'Chinese style'."

By Xie Guoqing and Bai Jianan