A TEAM of young designers from Austria won the Shenzhen Design Award for Young Talents (SZDAY), an international design award among the UNESCO Creative Cities Network members, at China Cultural Center in Paris last week.

    Team. Breath. Austria. is a young design team from Graz, Austria, specializing in architecture and landscape design. They won US$30,000 with their environmental-friendly design work.

    Other 15 award-winners included teams and individuals from countries and regions such as Canada, South Korea, France, Finland and Hong Kong.

    The SZDAY involves all members of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, targeting young designers under the age of 35.

    The award, which has been a biennial event since it was launched in 2013, focuses on the contributions of creativity to environmental sustainability, social and economic development and the quality of life in cities.

    Organized by the city’s cultural and creative industry funds, the city’s government and UNESCO Creative Cities Network, it also aims to encourage exchange between young talent from different member cities, inspire cooperation between the member cities and nurture the sharing of experiences and ideas for developing cultural industries.

    This year’s award was officially launched in June 2015, and more than 1,000 young designers from 23 of the 69 member cities registered for the competition. Age limits for the award were under 35 years old for designers and 40 years old for architects. The organizing committee received 203 designs from the applicants.

    The final judging board included seven world-renowned designers and architects and the final decisions were made in late November.

    The UNESCO Creative Cities Network is a program launched by UNESCO in 2004. It includes creative cities of crafts & folk art, design, film, gastronomy, literature, music and media arts. So far, a total of 116 cities around the world have joined in the network. Among them, “Cities of Design” category has the largest number of members, which includes cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Berlin, Montreal, Seoul, Kobe, Nagoya, Turin and Buenos Aires.

    Shenzhen became one of UNESCO’s Cities of Design in 2008, the first Chinese city to win the title. (Wang Yuanyuan)