Polestar’s 2022 Design Contest Centers Sustainability
The theme for this year’s contest for student and professional designers is “performance”
When we spoke with Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath and Head of Design Max Missoni about their inaugural Design Contest in 2020, the duo looked to pure, distilled concepts that evolve Polestar‘s philosophy. Now, for their third edition, the Swedish automotive brand seeks to envision the future of sustainability. The theme for the 2022 Design Concept is “performance” and the brief, as the brand states, is “to design a Polestar that is about the experience of performance, and the advanced technical story that enables this in a sustainable way.”
As the electric vehicle company often prioritizes timelessness over trends, it makes sense that this year’s competition uncouples performance with high consumption. Instead, the brief embodies the opposite: concepts should be in line with “the electric age,” the brand elaborates. Like the previous years, the designs do not need to be cars but they should point toward an exciting future direction for Polestar and align with the brand’s design language and ethos.
As always, the contest is open to student and professional designers alike. This year, however, Polestar will choose two winners: one for interiors and one for exteriors. The winners’ designs will be merged together and realized into a full-size model (if it is car-sized or smaller) that will be presented at the Shanghai Auto Show in 2023. In addition, 10 professional and 10 student contestants will be shortlisted and will receive guidance and feedback from Polestar designers. Five of each will be announced as finalists on 1 November before the winners are released on 11 November.
To enter, contestants need only be over the age of 18 to qualify and should submit two separate images of their design in order to holistically showcase different angles of the concept. A 200-word description of the experience and technical aspects of the design is also required. The submissions will be judged by Missoni, Senior Design Manager Juan Pablo Bernal and Car Design Research Director Sam Livingstone. Submissions will be accepted from 22 to 31 August.
Hero image of “Polestar MMXL 00” by Konrad Cholewka’, Polestar 2020 Design Contest winner, courtesy of Polestar
