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Kohler Co. Captures Coveted Gold iF Design Award and 12 Additional iF Design Accolades

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Kohler Co. secured 13 iF product design awards under its Kohler, Mira and Klafs brands, emphasizing the company’s significant impact on global design and innovation. In this year’s iF design competition, Kohler’s product designs secured recognition in several categories, including the coveted Gold award, which earned Kohler a place among only 75 Gold winners at the upcoming award ceremony in Berlin. Kohler’s multiple awards represent innovative designs and technologies developed in each of the company’s global studios – United States, United Kingdom, India, and China.

 

With 10,800 entries from 72 countries, the iF Design Awards is one of the most prestigious and relevant design competitions in the world. To be the recipient of the iF Design Award means passing a rigorous two-stage selection by renowned design experts, who evaluate submissions based on idea, form, function, differentiation, and impact.

 

Creativity and leading-edge design are the heart and soul of the Kohler ethos and its teams of bold creators around the world are the foundation of some of the most iconic brands in home design. The company has forged a reputation for innovation, artistry, and design while also possessing an operating philosophy rooted in entrepreneurial spirit, tenacity, and humility.

 

“For more than 150 years, Kohler has been dedicated to advancing innovation and unparalleled design. It is a tremendous honor to be recognized for the passion and ingenuity of our development teams,” says David Kohler, Chair and CEO of Kohler Co. “This recognition from iF affirms our ongoing commitment to creating impactful solutions in all markets across the globe.”

 

Kohler’s design prowess has been celebrated for well over a century, including a 1920s feature installation of the company’s color bathroom fixtures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, major partnerships with globally renowned artists and designers, showstopping installations in some of the most revered design meccas and world-class designed environments, and dozens of accolades spanning myriad product categories. Kohler product designs have garnered nearly 100 iF awards in the past two decades alone, as well as earning top rankings in all leading global design awards including Red Dot, IDEA and Fast Company.

 

The KOHLER Loope container-based sanitation toilet, a 2024 iF GOLD Product Design Award recipient – and the company’s first-ever Gold level award recipient – is a waterless sanitation solution that integrates with container-based sanitation waste collection models. It was designed to bring safe sanitation to dense urban environments where alternative options are often nonexistent. The Loope toilet was developed within Kohler’s Innovation for Good (IfG) platform, an in-house incubator focused on creating new business opportunities with a social and environmental purpose. The IfG solutions are rooted in making positive impacts on communities and lives around the world by increasing access to safe water and sanitation.

 

The Loope toilet was inspired by UN Sustainable Development Goal #6 of “ensuring access to safe and affordable sanitation for all,” and iF design award jurors noted that “this is a great example of design innovation in the service of humanity.”

 

“As part of our Innovation for Good portfolio, Loope has the real potential to positively impact a significant number of lives around the world. Winning the Gold iF design award brings much needed attention to the issue of unsafe sanitation that affects so many people,” says Laura Kohler, Chief Sustainable Living Officer for Kohler Co. “This and other products stemming from our IfG incubator program harness associates’ passions to develop meaningful solutions that provide greater access to sustainable living.”

 

Kohler Co. – under its Kohler, Mira and Klafs brands – received 12 additional iF Product Design Awards for solutions in showering, bathroom faucets, toilets, sinks, storage, kitchen faucets and saunas:

 

 

Hanergy’s Innovative Thin-Film Solar Products Win Multiple iF Design Awards

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One of the world’s largest thin-film solar power solution companies, Hanergy Mobile Energy Holding Group, attended Germany’s iF Design Award Night in Munich in March, winning four prizes in total. These includee: one Gold Award for the Single-Glass Triple-Arch HanTile, and another three Design Awards for the Single-Glass Spool HanTile, Fold Backpack for Business Travel, and Solartank Thin-film Solar Power Backpack. HanTile is Hanergy’s rooftop solar solution while the solar backpack is Hanergy’s creation of integrating solar power generation with backpacks.

Xie Tao, CEO of Hanergy’s Global Application Product R&D Center attended the award ceremony and received the awards on behalf of Hanergy.

The iF Design Award committee commented on HanTile, saying, “This product combines a traditional appearance with the latest energy breakthrough. These tiles represent the world’s most advanced thin-film solar energy technology. Any house or building covered in these roof tiles has the chance to be energy-self-sufficient or at least offset its energy footprint. The tiles have the look of glazed tiles and come in black or dark-green colors. This is the future of solar energy: integrated, efficient, attractive and unobtrusive.”

Since its launch in 2018, Hanergy has harvested many HanTile contracts such as a US$130 Million HanTile contract in Japan, a US$10 million contract in Malaysia, and US$8 million contract in South Korea and so on.

Solar backpacks are another line of business for Hanergy. By merging Hanergy’s unique solar thin-films with traditional backpacks, it creates a new category of smart bags.

Receiving the awards at the ceremony, Xie Tao said: “We believe that these products make a perfect combination of advanced thin-film solar technology and sustainable product application, and the awards are an acknowledgement that Hanergy’s product design deserves to be at the forefront of the industry. We are honoured.”

Hanergy’s four award-winning products are all recent innovations launched in 2018 and designed in-house by Hanergy’s product research and development team. By winning the highly-sought after iF Gold Award, Hanergy’s Single-Glass Triple-Arch HanTile’s innovative single-glass structure, light and durable design and beautiful appearance was recognised as one of this year’s most outstanding entries. 

With its thin, light-weight and flexible features and high conversion efficiency, Hanergy’s five thin-film solar technology roadmaps have changed the landscape of the solar industry. The conversion rate of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) technology manufactured by Alta Devices, Hanergy’s California-based subsidiary, has set the world record for conversion efficiency several times, with the current rate standing at 29.1 percent.

Likewise, Hanergy’s flexible and glass-based large-area Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) thin film modules produced by Germany’s Solibro and USA’s MiaSolé, also Hanergy’s subsidiaries, have reached world record highs of 18.72 percent and 19.4 percent respectively.