The “Hook”, a solution to avoid direct contact with surfaces
Anna Borla graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in Industrial Product Design. She has learned that a designer must always be able to observe and be inspired by the life around and design a solution to problems of any kind.
Noticing that many people, inside the public transports tended to support themselves by their shoulders, elbows or even tried not to use supports, in order to avoid touching the surfaces touched by everyone. To solve the problem, she designed a tool capable of hooking to the handrails thus avoiding direct contact with surfaces. “Hook” is designed and produced entirely in Italy by a team of designers, engineers and professionals. It has been tested successfully on public transports, from Milan to NYC.
Hook is an eco-friendly product, made with long fibre reinforced polyamides. The symbol printed on the side opposite the logo indicates the nature of the material. Hook is produced by Ergotec s.r.l, an Italian company producer of structural parts for the automotive industry. The use Grivory HTV-5H1 black 9205 a 50% glass-fibre reinforced engineering thermoplastic material, makes metal replacement possible in new and challenging fields of application.
The long reinforcement fibres form a fibre web inside the injection-moulded components which provides sustainably improved thermo-technical properties. Thanks to the use of this material, Hook is strong, easy to clean and resistant to dirt. With the advent of the Coronavirus, Hook has begun to arouse more interest and to date it is used in different situations, avoiding to come into direct contact with the surfaces. Being a multipurpose hook, it is also useful in the marine world: it is convenient to hook the mooring rig being resistant to atmospheric agents and significant traction forces.
