Auto Channel

Audi recognizes artists as pop-culture icons often setting trends for the masses and it's no mistake Audi has aligned themselves with such freethinkers. As a marketing tool as well as an outlet for Audi's own design endeavors, Design Miami, represents the gathering of the most influential designers, art gallery owners, dealers, and collectors in Miami’s Design District to present and absorb the latest trends.

Audi's own exhibition titled, “Wire Frame”, places the recently revealed Audi Cross Cabriolet Concept study as the focal point. Keeping it on the simple side, Audi has stretched cables over the vehicle which, “simulate the vehicle’s design lines in a three dimensional space”. Similar to last years uninspiring Design Miami Audi R8 Ignition exhibit, clearly Audi wants the focus to be the car, so the lack of any real integration of the vehicle with the display itself, is disappointing. Surely Audi would garner bigger headlines if they chopped the concept in half and suspended the pieces by the stretched cables above, as an example, but given the costs of these prototypes, it's understandable the exhibits need to be artistically lame tame.

Press Release

The Audi Design Lab provides spectacular insights

Experience design processes live

• Panel discussion with internationally-renowned designers

• Audi Cross Cabriolet is the focal point of an exciting creation

Between December 7th and 9th, 2007, the most influential designers, art gallery owners, dealers, and collectors will gather in Miami’s Design District to present and absorb the latest trends from the world of design. This year, Audi is again present as the exclusive automobile sponsor and creative exhibitor at “Design Miami/ 2007”, founded by Ambra Medda. “We want to promote young, progressive art,” explains Ralph Weyler, Member of the Board of Management at AUDI AG for Marketing and Sales. “This means placing top priority on innovation and design.”

As a magnet attracting interest from the international design and art scene, Design Miami/ is an ideal stage where the brand with the four rings can appear as a designer among designers and find inspiration. Audi’s chief designer, Stefan Sielaff, also believes this: “Future trends and emerging developments are best detected where free art and applied art meet.”

The focal point of the creative presentation will be the Audi Cross Cabriolet concept study, which celebrated its successful premiere at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. Sturdy, powerful but at the same time elegant, the styling of the study will catch everybody’s attention. Cables stretched under tension in the atrium of the Moore Building exhibition hall simulate the vehicle’s design lines in a three dimensional space and round off this extraordinary creation with the title “Wire Frame”.

The creation, whose name is taken from the preliminary phase in the plastic design process, is accompanied by an Audi Design Lab set up specifically for Design Miami/ 2007. This is the first chance ever for visitors to the show to look over the shoulders of actual Audi designers as they sketch out their designs and craft models out of clay.

Another high spot involving Audi is a panel discussion on the subject of “The human element. How are designers preserving soul in the 21st Century?” Taking part are the French designer Matali Crasset, the renowned U.S. architect Chad Oppenheim, today’s most renowned Swiss landscape gardener Enzo Enea and Audi’s chief designer Stefan Sielaff. These top-flight international experts representing four different design disciplines will provide fascinating insights into their work.

On the automobile design scene, Audi is recognized for design icons such as the Audi TT, the Audi A5 and the Audi R8 sports car, just picked as the best-looking automobile in the world.