Saint-Etienne, UNESCO City of Design, has participated to the 3rd edition of Shenzhen Design Award for Young Talents (SDAY) organized by SDPA in autumn 2017Since the creation of this Award in 2013, the Cité du design promoted the award amongst local young designers, organized a local jury, and for and  allow Saint-Etienne to win 4 Award on 21 in total on January 2018 , as  in 2013 and 2015: 

-  1 Merit Award for Professionals: Studio Captain Ludd (Juliana Gotilla, Paul Buros , Martin Guillaumie)  projects Place du Coq  [project developed within the programme Human Cities] and Pixel Dormoy (social design)

-  2 New Star Awards for ESADSE students : Annabel Bonnard & Clémentine Mechri: artisanal knives Sakku ; Earvin Epistolin : project Caresses (prospective tools for hand-pollination)

-  1 Best nominator Award: Cité du design

The theme of 2017 competition” Craftsmanship : the Spirit of Design” was interpreted by Saint-Etienne designers by a variety of projects dealing with experimentation, social design, transmission of know-how  and future living conditions. For Saint-Etienne, it was a great honour to see the talents of its young designers rewarded by a jury of international professional designers amongst 260 applicants from 21 creative cities.

Martin Guillaumie, designer from Captain Ludd studio, Earvin Epistolin, ESADSE student, Isabelle Verilhac and Camille Vilain from Cité du design were invited in Shenzhen to participate to the Awards events from 5th to 8th February 2018.

They attended the SDAY Award Ceremony in the brand-new Design Society Museum and the opening of the SDAY exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition (MOCAPE). For the designers, it was the opportunity to meet the other young awarded talents from Puebla, Detroit, Dundee, Turin, and China and to discover the creative landscape of Shenzhen. They also exchanged about the topics of cities development during a visit and conference at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture, with a very interesting focus this year on Urban Village and Global South habitat architecture.  During the Award events, the Cité du design announced that Chinese UNESCO Creative Cities of Design would be the Guest Cities of Honour for its next Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne 2019 and started to work on cooperation programmes with the gathered creative cities in Shenzhen and new contacts.