Flat-pack plug designer wins top award
Judges wowed by elegant take on UK's clunky three-pin power system
Young designer Min-Kyo Choi has bagged the Design Museum-backed Brit Insurance Design Award 2010 for his novel take on Britain's bulky three-pin power plug.
Choi's design, which Reg Hardware featured back in June 2009, packs the standard UK plug in to a flat unit 48 x 44 x 10mm.
Design Award winner: Choi's three-pin plug
The live and neutral pins can be rotated from a horizontal to vertical position so that they sit underneath the plug’s earth pin. The plug’s body can then be folded flat allowing for easy stowage.
The fuse fits into the cord connection, and there's a handle to allow you to pull the plug out of socket.
The Award judges - who had already voted Choi's plug as the year's top design in the Product category - praised his "elegant design" and "transformation" of an everyday object.
Choi's concept beat winners from the Awards' architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive and transport categories - among them the late Alexander McQueen.
South Korea-born Choi only completed his design MA, at the Royal College of Art, last year. ®
COMMENTS
Eh?
Are you speaking from under a bridge? I hope so.
Considering the sub-standard designs the rest of the world has come up with, I'm glad ours is functional and safe, and not something my (nonexistent) 3 year old can stick a teaspoon into and instantly fry themselves.
Christ, Europe had to "ban" banana plugs because they fit perfectly into their crappy non-shuttered, non-switched socket designs.
Oh, and it's not just the UK that uses BS1363. If we're to "be a good country" then you'd better get on with asking Ireland, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Botswana, Ghana, Hong Kong, Macau, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Mauritius, Iraq, Kuwait, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Belize, Dominica, St. Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada to be a good country too.
PS: Good luck with Zimbabwe.
PPS: Yes I really am that sad.
I do wonder
..if the designer has made sure that the internal cable routing is such that if the cable were torn out (by some clumsy git tripping over it, and the strain relief failing due to Rays, for example), whether it would tear out in the correct order, with the live coming out, then the neutral, then the earth (if any)?
..this is one of the current more subtle characteristics of the UK plug..
Yes, I'm getting it now, it's the one with the spiral bound notebook and flash of weak lemon drink in the pocket..
Earth?
Europlug is (a) low current and more importantly (b) has no Earth connection. How so many countries around the world have accepted unearthed mains connections I will never understand.
Crappy two pin sockets and crappy standards
George VI is indeed dead, but not, I gather, due to electrocution, nor being burnt to death by a short-out fire. Quaint, I know, but that is how we like things here.
And to think our high standards of consumer protection don't even require a culture of private litigation, to come to a spluttering half-fruition, as in some countries which shall remain nameless!
13A?
I'm sceptical as to whether or not that thing would either pass safety approvals or handle 13 Amperes.
Flames, well because I think it would be a fire starter!
