The winners of Australia’s peak international design awards – the highest honour for design and innovation in the country were announced today during the 2020 Good Design Week.
Custodian Secure Bathroom Range by Enware Australia received a prestigious Good Design Award Winner Accolade in the Product Design Hardware and Building category in recognition for outstanding design and innovation. It is the sixth year in a row that Enware Australia have won a Good Design Award accreditation.
About Custodian Secure Bathroom Range
Enware’s Custodian™ Range is the complete secure bathroom solution designed to improve the rehabilitative process. Providing safety and security with enhanced comfort and care, the Custodian range offers a more normalized bathroom experience to assist therapeutic efforts with an aim to reduce recidivism.
Designed By:
Enware Design Team
Jason Hinds, Phillip Murray Walker
Matthew Wolstenholme, Matt Holt
James Xi, Jose Ramirez
Graphics and video:
Jack McWatters
Commissioned By:
Enware Design Team
Designed In: Australia
The Good Design Awards Jury praised Custodian Secure Bathroom Range, commenting:
“The Custodian Range is a secure bathroom solution that has been cleverly designed to improve the overall rehabilitative process in cells. The design language and functionality offers a more normalised bathroom experience while reducing the risks of self-harm and vandalism. An extremely challenging overall design brief that has been executed very professionally. This product range has wider social impacts that would have been very difficult to design for and the design team at Enware should be congratulated for the job they have done. A great example of good, solid and professional industrial design applied to a challenging design brief – well done.â€
The human centred research approach that informed the design was carried out by Jason Hinds, Enware’s Research and Development Manager who explains that the Custodian Range was designed in direct response to the broader social challenge around breaking the cycle of recidivism and making our communities safer. The challenge was to create a range of in cell secure bathroom fittings that offer more than the basic human rights of sanitation and hydration. The design objective involved creating positive social impact by designing a therapeutic tool that can help assist with one’s rehabilitation.
Daily tasks involving personal hygiene, hydration and water are highly valued inside a prison as they are the one thing an inmate controls and the only thing that represents a sense of normality.
“Our design objective was looking to enhance the bathroom experience by providing dignity, comfort and normalising the environment through enabling personal control over daily activities like showering, toileting and cleaning that help with personal recovery†says Hinds.
“For instance, the Custodian shower control panel provides light feedback for run time indication every minute for showering as well as flow ending indication, rather than just tuning off which increases tension and frustration insideâ€
“The normalisation of custodial environments is consistently supported by evidence to help rehabilitate and reduce recidivism. Therefore our goal was to normalise the design of the Custodian range and empower greater choice and personalization over daily bathroom experiences†says Hinds.
Kavan Applegate, Director of Guymer Bailey Architects and member of ICPA’s Design and Planning committee, says he has been genuinely impressed with the level of thinking that Jason Hinds and Enware have incorporated into the new Custodian range of products.
“Having seen the progression of the range over time, it has been clear the focus of design of individual components has been to normalise them for more therapeutic and rehabilitative environments. Showers and basins in secure facilities can feel institutionalised and normalising these daily rituals is important. Enware’s rethinking of that component, removing the standard push-button activation and having water control activated through a normal tap-turning mechanism, and the benefit of a coloured LED surround to the mixer to indicate temperature, is a simple and intuitive solution. Enhanced look and feel add to the design improvements†says Applegate.
Good Design Awards:
The annual Good Design Awards is Australia’s oldest and most prestigious international Awards for design and innovation with a proud history dating back to 1958. The Awards celebrate the best new products and services on the Australian market, excellence in architectural design, engineering, fashion, digital and communication design, design strategy, social impact design and young designers.
More than 55 Good Design Awards Jurors evaluated each entry according to a strict set of design criteria which covers ‘good design’, ‘design innovation’ and ‘design impact’. Projects recognised with a Good Design Award must demonstrate excellence in good design and convince the Jury they are worthy of recognition at this level.
The 2020 Good Design Awards attracted a record number of submissions with an astonishing 835 design projects evaluated in this year’s international design awards.
Enware Good Design Accreditations include:
- SQX Range – Finalist 2015
- eSQX – Finalist 2016
- Wellbeing – Good Design Selection 2017
- Tank Shower – Gold Award 2018
- Blueline – Gold Award 2019
- Custodian – Winner Accolade Award 2020
For further information on Enware’s Custodian® Solution click here or for interview opportunities with Jason Hinds, please email [email protected]
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