crescent handle by rafael gonzalez urdaneta - hands on door handles shortlist

'crescent handle' by rafael gonzalez urdaneta from canada is one of the shortlisted entries from our recent designboom
competition 'hands on door handles' organized by designboom in collaboration with COLOMBO design.
the door handle contest yielded entries from more than 6, 000 participants and has been juried by
UK designer jasper morrison and US-based reiser and umemoto architects.

'I was thinking about what a door handle is, and how if simplified to its basic function it can be considered an interface between
the user and the door, an integrated tool that stays in place to help the user activate the mechanism that unlocks the door and
lets him go through and would be virtually not accessible to the naked hand if this element was not present.
so after this analysis I compared to other existing tools that would provide a similar way of grabbing and turning the pin
that unlocks the door, and I found that a wrench could be used to do just that. this handle would be cast metal with a spun
metal base, as any of the other handles in colombo design catalogue. I included different finish options that I think could work'.
rafael gonzalez urdaneta

chosen as one of the 165 overall shortlisted projects, 'crescent' was selected from the 'freestyle' category of the competition,
in which we asked for experimental designs that still manage to match the specified technical requirements indicated.
designboom is currently publishing the most common 'variations on a theme' received,
and more than 20 types of door handles working with a similar concept as 'crescent' were submitted to our competition.

may 31st, 2011, 6:00 pm