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Close your eyes, tap in and imagine today’s most fabulous faucets. If you visualized luxurious sculptural hardware, it is entirely understandable. From Zaha Hadid Design’s ZH Triflow Quadro Kitchen Tap to American Standard’s 3-D-Printed Metal Faucets, faucet glory is often derived from the brilliance of the hardware itself, rather than that of the water streaming out.
Yet Simin Qiu, who graduated with a master’s in Product Design from London’s Royal College of Art in 2015 and is now the Senior Product Designer at Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, dares you to redirect your attention. With three stunning concept designs that release an artful latticework of water in place of a mainstream cylindrical flow, you may not be able to resist his call.
Images of the Swirl faucet via Behance
The Swirl concept was inspired by sacred spirals that are among us in nature. Including plants, shells, sand and, most importantly, water, Qiu grew fascinated with the many naturally spiraling phenomena that we witness every day. He observed water’s tendency to spiral like a vortex especially when pressurized through a pipeline. Because water’s rate of flow also slowed down when spiraling, Qiu sought to harness this natural movement pattern for good, creating a faucet that saves water through its magical spiraling output.
Preliminary sketches of Swirl’s activation button via Behance
The entire performance is activated with the delicate touch of a circular button that sits on top of the faucet’s head. Once set into rotation, water moves from a pipeline toward the nozzle, at which point it is filtered through two stacked turbines. The perforated turbines, which vigorously swirl in opposite directions, create two rings through which water is released, resulting in elegant geometric patterns. The mesmerizing cross-hatched designs have even been likened to the decorative patterns that adorn crystal glassware.
Left: diagram of inner faucet structure, image via My Modern Met; right: three possible swirl patterns, image via Behance
According to Qiu, the swirling action saves up to 15 percent on water usage, thus rendering Swirl an economical and sustainable option. As a result, Qiu’s Swirl design was awarded an iF Design concept award in 2014, which acknowledged its ingenious potential in both function and aesthetic.
Images of the Swirl faucet via Behance
Swirl is just one of Qiu’s many designs that works to broaden the horizon of how we conceive of everyday objects. Searching for new approaches to material composition, Qiu’s later project, “Value in End Grain,” harnessed off-cut pine waste from large-scale manufactured products and used it to create collections of small furniture items. Otherwise neglected and regarded as garbage, he lauded these materials for their gorgeous patterns and unique ability to transmit light.
Qiu is an expert in transforming the sometimes mundane into usable designs that are extraordinarily beautiful. By taking cues from the natural world and relishing in overlooked pockets of its viability, this talented product designer continues to use his work to challenge hegemonic understandings of how we believe materials should be used.
The votes are in, and Architizer is thrilled to unveil the winners of the A+Product Awards! Register for Architizer's A+Product Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.
