What’s Down is Up with This Faucet Turned Water Fountain
Getting a drink of water from the bathroom sink is typically difficult or wasteful – difficult if you don’t have a cup in there and have to use your hand to transport the water to your mouth, and wasteful if you use those little disposable cups next to the sink. ECA industrial design graduate Alice Spieser created a remarkably simple solution to this problem: a faucet and water fountain in one.
The Down Up is a faucet that also functions as a drinking fountain. The tap’s default function is as a downward-flowing faucet. But after you wash your hands or brush your teeth, you just cover up the bottom faucet opening with your finger and the water is diverted up. The stream of water lets you take a cup-free drink.
Spieser’s invention was nominated for a James Dyson innovation award for its smart but easily operable design. Besides being more sanitary than using your hand (or worse, a reusable cup that sits in the bathroom gathering germs), it’s eco-friendly because makes those little plastic or paper disposable cups unnecessary as well.
“A sip of water should be pleasant, and not something embarrassing,” Spieser told Dezeen. “I decided to make it a nice gesture. The idea was to produce an object that permits the user to drink tap water in a simple gesture without necessarily using a glass. For me it was the most logical and representative form of the idea that first of all the water goes down to wash their hands and then up to drink,” said the designer.
“If you obstruct this one with your finger the water rises in the spout at the top and create enough spray to drink in a nice position without any splash,” the designer explained.
To produce her tap, Spieser turned to KWC, a Swiss tap manufacturer, to create the internal parts. The brilliant tap turned fountain design is now up for the prestigious James Dyson Award.
