Exciting Design Concepts
The jury honored several exciting concepts from international participants in the competition. Two ideas won the day: With their concepts, KWAutomotive and Design Storz showed how to optimally use the limited space inside headlamps to integrate moving animations. The “Special Mention Award” in the category of environment and sustainability, worth 2,500 euros, went to Eoos Next from Vienna, which submitted a particularly environmentally-friendly design. However, several other participants also took home prizes like a night-time drive in a ZKW development vehicle or a visit to the ZKW light channel.

First-Class Jury
The numerous entries were evaluated by a first-class jury, including Lilli Hollein, Director of the design festival Vienna Design Week, Johann SAILER, Community Manager of the Innox Network, Christopher Lindinger, MAS, Vice Rector for Innovation and Research at Johannes-Kepler University Linz and Hannes Scheer, Head of Innovation at ZKW Group GmbH. The winning concept impressed the jury particularly because it perfectly supports current LED Microlens Array Technology, allowing for a wide range of different design options. “In addition, we really liked the combination of static and moving parts, since this offers a broad range of applications,” says Lilli Hollein.

Design as a Key Factor
Modern light technology systems are becoming more complex, and competition in the automotive lighting sector is growing continuously. Likewise, design is playing an ever more important role – including in ZKW’s corporate strategy. New, futuristic headlamp designs reflect the advantages of current technologies like LED lighting systems. The designs focuses on MLA (Micro Lens Array) technology – called “brickZ” at ZKW. MLA technology is designed to shrink the size of common projection light modules as much as possible, arranging these in compressed form in a freely designed array. This eliminates restrictions on the lens designs of the future.