Boris Johnson unveils winning London carafe design
London Mayor Boris Johnson has unveiled the winner of the London on Tap carafe design competition.
Industrial designer Neil Barron’s Tap Top, which features four drip-free pouring spouts and a waist to trap ice-cubes when pouring, is the winning design.
Resembling a stylised tap fixture, the carafe will be available in at least two colours, and can fit inside a standard fridge door.
Tap Top will be mass-manufactured in England in January, before going on sale to London’s restaurants, bars and cafés in the spring.
Organised by Thames Water and the Mayor of London, the environmental campaign London on Tap aims to reduce usage of bottled mineral water in restaurants, bars and cafés.
Barron has previously created products for Intel, Boots, The Body Shop and Lego, and is a part-time tutor at the Royal College of Art.
The designer describes his carafe as ‘tall, tapered and elegant, yet contemporary, like an inverted rocket’.
Johnson awarded Barron a £5000 prize at a ceremony at London’s City Hall. The Mayor professed to being ‘hugely impressed by the magnitude of London-based design talent that this competition has revealed.’
Tap Top was selected from a shortlist of ten designs, whittled down from an original 115 entries, by a panel including architect Zaha Hadid, chef Aldo Zilli and Design Week editor Lynda Relph-Knight.
How do you get the ice cubes in – but prevent them from being poured aswell? Do the cubes slide to the carafe neck en masse – and trap themselves? If so – clever, if not – what?
I would guess the average ice cube shape has to go in at a certain angle. But when the water is poured because the angle of the cube is random (or perpendicular with the surface of the water) it is unlikely not impossible that the cube will come out until it has half melted by which time the water should be cold?
…and what is the carafe made of??
SA