DESIGN NAME: Aluvia
PRIMARY FUNCTION: Faucet
INSPIRATION: Aluvia faucet collection is born out of the iconography of traditional faucets, their simplicity to deliver water through trustworthy materials; Aluvia reflects the heritage of the company with 135 years in the Colombian market, always providing families with simple yet beautiful solutions for the kitchen and bathroom.
Aluvia strives to provide Latin American families with long lasting and beautiful solutions.
UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Aluvia Faucet collection consists in 4 different products for the kitchen and bathroom; these designs are focused in Latin American families. All faucets are manufactured in recyclable plastics, such as ABS and POM; its chassis design makes them very easy to install by any user, switching between handles is simple and fun, furthermore, the maintenance can be performed by non-professionals thus saving money and time.
OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: Water consumption complies with international standards, allowing the products to be eco-friendly. The handle design makes the faucet operation intuitive, the aerator is carefully placed so it doesn't splash the user with high flow rates, this characteristic makes it also ergonomic when installed in the basin.
PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: The project started in June 2015 in Bogota, Colombia and finished its design stage in July 2016 in Bogota, Colombia. Aluvia collection will be introduce into the market in June 2017.
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PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: Aluvia started with a rigorous research in Latin America, with families from all socio-economic levels, using design thinking tools to find valuable insights that could provide tangible inputs for a successful design; all faucets are manufactured with injection molding technology, the material used for the cases is ABS, and POM for the internal chassis containing functional parts. Faucets are assembled in Colombia with automated machines and high skilled personnel. All faucets in the range comply with international standards, making them especially valuable in terms of water saving.
SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: Aluvia collection is composed by 8 inches faucets for the kitchen and bathroom, a 4 inches bathroom faucet and one single lever faucet for the kitchen. Their denomination in inches are a common way to categorize faucets in the market, 8 and 4 inches are the distance between handles.
TAGS: faucet, kitchen, bathroom, Aluvia, plastic
RESEARCH ABSTRACT: Design thinking tools were use among others to find valuable design insights. One of the goals with the research was to find an easy way to let the user assemble and do maintenance without any extra cost, empowering the user with intuitive products, thus saving time and money. Detailed engineering and technology used for the chromed cases, allows the products to look impeccable; extensive research was performed to find the best manufacturing practices to obtain neat looking faucets. Designing for Latin American families brings new ways of approaching the market, allowing the people to reduce their remodeling cycles, enables the product lines to extend through time with different complementary collections. Cost driven design is a challenge itself, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be aesthetically pleasant and comforting; with this project, the company wanted to reflect its values and promises and communicate them in tangible products, to achieve this, extensive interviews and focus groups were performed to find design trends that could be aligned with company values.
CHALLENGE: Designing innovative and contemporary products in plastic brings several design considerations and challenges; providing the user with products that are easy and quick to assembly was one of the main daring objectives in the project, as well as an accurate case design for the injection molding technology, taking into account that chrome parts reflect imperfections more accurately than any other surface finish. Finding the balance between functionality and aesthetics is the most outstanding achievement in the Aluvia collection.
ADDED DATE: 2016-11-28 21:15:42
TEAM MEMBERS (3) : Nicolas Ochoa, Maria Isabel Toro and Juan Mesa
IMAGE CREDITS: Image #1: Corona design team, Aluvia, 2016
Image #2: Corona design team, Aluvia, 2016
Image #3: Corona design team, Aluvia, 2016
Image #4: Corona design team, Aluvia, 2016
Image #5: Corona design team, Aluvia, 2016
PATENTS/COPYRIGHTS: Copyrights belong to Colceramica S.A.S., 2016
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