Formerly known as the Michelin Challenge Design, the international competition has a rich 21-year history when it comes to fostering and encouraging innovation from the brightest minds in the design industry. Over the last two decades, the challenge issued a broad brief to designers, asking them to create innovative mobility solutions that push the boundaries of human ingenuity, creativity, and even empathy. For the year 2022, the now rebranded Movin’On Challenge Design invited participants to rally around the theme of ‘DELIVERED’, which drew focus on logistical equality and equitability, or being able to get goods and services to the people who need them.
For the year 2022, the Movin’On Challenge Design extended beyond mere transportation. The brief was made open to artists, designers, engineers, architects, city planners, creatives, or anyone with a strong vision to build a more equitable, sustainable future by considering mankind’s need for and relation to mobility. With the challenge coming to a close on the 1st of March followed by an intense jury phase, the Movin’on Challenge Design unveiled its 3 winners for the year 2022.
Click here to see all the Winning Designs of the 2022 Movin’On Challenge Design
First Prize – AGORA by Damián Mora, Pau Verdú, Fabiana Pando, Víctor Fernández, María Mora
Aligned with UN Sustainability Goals, AGORA is a moving cultural center that helps energize and activate communities with cultural activities. ” In a future where more and more people work from home, the access to activities related to culture, leisure and entertainment need to be diversified,” say the designers behind AGORA. “Although the trend towards digitization promotes access to culture from homes, digital media should not replace next the unique experience in face-to-face spaces of culture and entertainment.” Embellished with LED panels on the outside to inform and attract, and a dynamic surface on the inside that seems a lot like a museum or experience center on wheels, AGORA helps bring connectivity, diversity, and inclusivity to areas where they’re needed the most.
Second Prize – GAC FORMA, Sharon Ramalingam Radhakrishnan
“Being one of the highly populated places in the world, Sao Paulo, Brazil, faces the congestion problem”, explains designer Sharon Ramalingam Radhakrishnan. “This developing metropolis doesn’t have the adequate public transport because of spatial social inequality.” To combat this, GAC FORMA is a unique-looking subscription-based automobile that allows everyone to own a car without necessarily spending large sums of money on them. The car bridges financial and social inequality while also solving the city’s congestion problem. Moreover, designed as a cultural hat-tip to Brazil’s history, the car’s design is inspired by a hammock, which was used by Brazilians as early as the 16th century to elevate and protect them from animals in the forest.
Third Prize – R.R:ALPHA, Sheik Imthiyas Ahamed
As of 2020, an estimated 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas, with nearly hundreds of millions migrating to the city because of a staggering lack of essential goods and services for necessities, education, and treatment. RR Alpha is a vision to bridge between rural and urban to fulfil the rural requirements. Designed as a large vehicle with a built-in gyroscope and a zorb-inspired driver cabin, the RR Alpha provides the perfect level of stability required to commute between urban and rural setups while comfortably dealing with uneven roads, mud, terrain, and mountainous precipices. “This solution can deliver a large number of goods of different terrain simultaneously”, says designer Sheik Imthiyas Ahamed. “Many Indian rural face flood situations in periodic time RR. Alpha being amphibious, will help to deliver supplies in flood condition as well.”
Judge’s Award – SpaceX Bernard by Akkash Kohli, Niko Pekkarinnen, Hyeon Jeong
Designed for fire fighting and rescue missions, the SpaceX Bernard (named after the St. Bernard dog that does rescue missions too) is a multi-part vehicle that was purpose-built to save lives by ‘delivering’ safety services to people in a format that’s smaller and more compact than a fire truck. The vehicle comes with a ‘Fire Side’ that sports a coiled firehose for firefighting, a ‘Port Side’ for entry and exit, and a central cabin for as many as 4 refugees at any given point in time.
Judge’s Award – OWL by Chao-Lung Cheng
Designed to work entirely on solar power, the OWL drone helps with deliveries in rural parts of the world. Envisioned initially as a way to help distribute education and learning supplies, the OWL actually provides a great autonomous, energy-efficient delivery system that can work across industries, bridging the logistical gap between rural and urban parts of a region. The OWL comes with a carbon fiber construction and three propellers, and sports a large solar panel on its top that helps prolong its flight times during the day by keeping it recharged via solar energy. While it’s unclear if the OWL works entirely off solar power, it can use a strategy similar to the Lucid EV, using solar energy to dramatically increase its range.
Click here to see all the Winning Designs of the 2022 Movin’On Challenge Design
