NOV 2018 FEATURE:

Avid readers of the recent November edition of design bible Monocle magazine would not have missed the ‘The Better by Design Manifesto, 2018’ which listed 20 global life-changing designs launched in the past year.

Celebrating tools, materials and products that purport to ‘change life in tiny increments’, one particular pick has stood out — a Singapore brand that was just only launched this September.

Soft-closing drawer slides and furniture hinges have become increasingly common in furniture, so why not apply the same idea to door handles?

A home-grown furniture components firm saw an opportunity and launched a new brand that aims to bring the same quiet finesse to doors via the world’s first soft-rebound, silent door handle.

The brainchild of Singapore firm Verotec Pte Ltd, Turn is a new brand that offers innovative and sophisticated door handles using a patented soft-rebound mechanism. Its soft rebound handle mechanism is so intuitive and so logical that one can’t help but feel “why hasn’t anyone thought of this sooner?”

The devil’s in the details, as the saying goes.

And well-designed products are iconic for a reason.

Award-winning local industrial designer Gabriel Tan, who is leading the creative direction at Turn, had felt strongly that the new brand needed diverse perspectives on how best form, proportion and tactility would combine with this newly invented soft rebound feature.

And the rest is design history.

Nine international designers and architects, including Studio MK27 from Brazil, Claesson Koivisto Rune from Sweden, Jin Kuramoto from Japan, and Pauline Deltour from France, answered the call to come up with their distinctive take on Turn’s soft-rebound handles. All it took was a delivery of the prototypes of the mechanism and word of mouth to get them excited.

With a shared belief that soft-rebound handles are the future, each designer and architect conveyed their image of the ideal soft-rebound door handle that were informed and inspired by sculpture, architecture, literature, nature and ergonomics for the first Turn collection.

“No effort has been spared by our team in the research and development of the soft-rebound handles, and together with designers and architects, we endeavour to bring a new dimension in handle design and technology to commercial and residential spaces,” says Gabriel.

The designers and architects involved, of various nationalities, are all heavyweights in their field and each piece in the Turn collection is an object of beauty.

“Ri Shi” (Solar eclipse in Chinese) by Italian architect-designer Egidio Panzera counts as one of the standout pieces in the collection. Ri Shi’s handle tilts downward when opening the door, gliding with an off-centre rotating motion, rapidly unveiling a different material, a colour, a surprise. The geometry changes; the aesthetic changes. Releasing the handle, there is the eclipse, silent and slow. The idea is to create a correlation between the form of the handle and the new soft rebound mechanism, making that relationship clear and evident.

No less impressive is Gabriel’s own take for the collection, “Fin”, which was inspired by the fins of aquatic mammals and their beautiful, sculptural shapes . Wanting each door opening experience to be extra special, Gabriel’s studio worked hard to create a handle that is minimal, ergonomic and memorable. The thumb turn of the lock component was designed with the same inspiration in mind, resulting in a harmonious composition.

An overlooked product category often viewed as “hardware” or “ironmongery”, the new Turn collection aspires to give handles the respect they deserve. After all, when a person experiences a space he is first greeted by the door handle. However, a handle is typically selected for a space only after the interior design is done.

Turn had its brand launch during the Paris Design Week 2018 at the new Paris office of Norwegian architecture studio Snøhetta, one of the nine design studios involved in the project. The launch showcase, which was by invitation only, served to introduce the brand and collaborating designers, and also to seek feedback on the handle prototypes. It was wildly successful with strong media and buyer interest, with US, Europe and Asian companies hoping to gain distributorship.

Targeted at architects and designers of commercial projects, the debut collection of Turn is slated for a March 2019 commercial launch, with a retail price of €100-150 (S$155-233) for a pair of door handles in zamak that will come in satin chrome or matt black finishes. New collections are also being planned to be rolled out annually over the next two years.

In the words of the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, “The door handle is the handshake of a building” and the team at Turn couldn’t agree more.

For more info visit: http://www.turn-handles.com

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