BE OPEN BLOG

As useful as they are, fire extinguishers are normally designed to be too utilitarian and technical. Being particularly aesthetic, they are stored in attics and store-rooms, which are not easily accessible places. Besides, these devices that could quite literally save a person’s life can be quite difficult to operate correctly. These smart designs are both easy to use and aesthetically pleasing to sit in one’s house in plain sight.

The Fire Conqueror has been conceptualized  by the students of Dalian Minzu University – Yu Zhang, QingGuang, Chen HuaYing and Xu Jia Xu – specially for third-world countries and places where fire-fighting infrastructure isn’t readily available. The award-winning device helps make fire-fighting materials much more accessible by literally allowing you to turn a regular water bottle into an extinguisher.

The mechanism can be used with any standard bottle with a 28mm neck. Creating a fire-fighting material is easy enough as mixing vinegar and baking soda into the water inside the bottle. The effervescent solution generates bubbles containing CO₂, which when sprayed onto the fire, can help cut the oxygen supply to the fire and cause it to die down almost instantly.

To deploy the solution in a focused spray in the similar way the fire-extinguisher does, the user has to screw the Fire Conqueror module onto the top of the bottle and operate its valve to neutralize a fire.

The fire-extinguisher designed by the team in Samsung’s subsidiaries (Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance in collaboration with  a Seoul-based marketing company Cheil Worldwide) looks like a regular decorative vase made from translucent red glass, which can effortlessly blend into the interior where it can be within easy reach in case of an emergency.

Named Firevase, the object has the form of a double-walled flower-vase with potassium carbonate filled in the sealed outer chamber where it appears like water. A separate inner opening in the vase’s centre is designed to hold flowers in the usual way.

If a fire breaks out, the vessel can be smashed against the floor or a wall, allowing the potassium carbonate to discreetly spill out. A rapid cooling reaction started by the agent suppresses oxygen, which puts the fire out.

Back in its native in South Korea, the Firevase forms part of a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of keeping a fire extinguisher to hand, and that is a great example to follow.

Korean product designer Wooseok Kim has also come up with a solution to better integrate the device in the interior. Made with the harmony of the daily living space in mind, the minimalist, aesthetically pleasing design would look good in any room.

As functional as it is attractive, Blend can be managed intuitively by any user. The internal levels are made from a semi-translucent polycarbonate, so they can be gauged from a quick glance at the body, while the use of a mood light during inactivity helps find a fire extinguisher easier in a smoke-filled room.