Awarded

Philipp Gilgen

'Urban Bike Helmet' (diploma work)

Product and Industrial Design

Jury report

Beauty and the Bike Helmet
Philipp Gilgen has been se­lected for a de­sign grant on the basis of the Urban Bike Hel­met pro­to­type he de­vel­oped as part of his de­gree in in­dus­trial de­sign at the Fach­hochschule Nord­westschweiz, Hochschule für Gestal­tung und Kunst. He now in­tends to de­velop the pro­to­type to pro­duc­tion stan­dard, have it man­u­fac­tured and launch on the mar­ket.
The un­usual and ex­tremely con­tem­po­rary shape and colour­ing of the Urban Bike Hel­met are eye-catch­ing. The light green outer shell is or­gan­i­cally formed, stream­lined and has sev­eral sym­met­ri­cally aligned cut-outs. The strik­ing de­sign el­e­ments lend this pro­tec­tive head­gear an in­no­v­a­tive look. Philipp Gilgen took his in­spi­ra­tion from con­tem­po­rary graph­ics and fash­ion de­sign. It was im­por­tant to him to cre­ate an ob­ject whose form would allow the cy­clist to look el­e­gant on the road.
The Urban Bike Hel­met has a hard outer shell of 2K in­jec­tion moulded plas­tic and a porous inner shell. The lower end of the outer shell is fin­ished with a soft plas­tic com­po­nent. The hel­met can be fit­ted to the shape of the wearer's head by ad­just­ing the chin­strap.
The Urban Bike Hel­met is in­tended for every­day use in any weather and has a so­phis­ti­cated ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem: the cut-outs at the front can be pressed in, de­pend­ing on the weather, to en­sure op­ti­mum air­flow to the head on warm days. More­over, a va­ri­ety of com­fort­able padded in­serts are avail­able for dif­fer­ent sea­sons. The light, breath­able sum­mer padding also keeps out in­sects, while the wind­proof in­sert with ear­muffs pro­tects against the win­ter chill.
Philipp Gilgen has taken an en­tirely new ap­proach to hel­met de­sign, both in terms of form and func­tion, and has suc­ceeded ad­mirably with this well con­ceived and pur­pose-ori­ented ob­ject.
Au­re­lia Müller  

Biography

Philipp Gilgen
Born in
1976
Education
Designer FH, Studienbereich Industrial Design

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