Spray-on trainers, a water-filtering bottle cap and inflatable self-defence devices for protestors feature in our roundup of the most impactful product designs from 2024.
This year saw designers tackle urgent topics from decarbonisation and water scarcity to the right to protest.
Meanwhile, companies focused on breaking records, with the world’s thinnest watch and the first mass-market car without a rear window both making it onto the list.
Read on for our pick of the standout product designs from 2024:
Cloudboom Strike LS trainer by On
The second biggest news from sportswear brand On this year – after announcing a multi-year partnership with Zendaya – was the debut of these spray-on trainers at the Paris Olympics.
Produced in just three minutes, the Cloudboom Strike LS trainer features an upper made by spraying filament onto a foam-rubber and carbon-fibre sole using a robotic arm.
“The resulting textile is something completely new,” On’s Nils Altrogge told Dezeen. “There’s not even a word for that.”
Find out more about the Cloudboom Strike LS trainer ›
Swedish company Polestar made automotive history with the launch of the world’s first mass-market car to have no rear window.
Instead, a roof-mounted rear camera now provides a more reliable picture than a rear-view mirror in a coupé while providing more space for backseat passengers.
Rear windows were also conspicuously absent from Jaguar’s controversial Type 00 concept car – although reviewers were more divided over the design itself, with some calling it “violently ugly” and others a “design triumph”.
Find out more about the Polestar 4 ›
Danish potter and researcher Tavs Jorgensen has found a way to extrude cob – an ancient building material made from earth and straw – to create low-carbon bricks.
By pushing the material through 3D-printed extrusion moulds, instead of using the traditional labour-intensive hand-building process, the aim is to make the biomaterial more accessible and affordable to use in modern construction.
With the straw acting as a binder, the bricks don’t need to be fired and their interlocking shape eliminates the need for mortar, allowing them to be easily disassembled and composted at the end of their life.
Find out more about these cob bricks ›
Protest Street Seats by Pneuhaus
As demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza intensified at US universities in April, leading to the arrest of thousands of students, design studio Pneuhaus converted its inflatable Street Seats into self-defence devices and supplied them to a number of colleges.
Conceived to help protesters “de-escalate” potentially dangerous clashes with police, the modified design features handles that turn the benches into hand-held shields, while velcro allows them to be linked together to form barricades.
“We felt compelled to find a way to help protect these students given the failure of their administration,” said the studio. “It is a shame that a tool like this could be necessary on a college campus, but this is the situation we find ourselves in.”
Find out more about the Protest Street Seats ›
Filter Cap by Filsa and Ogilvy Colombia
This double-sided lid can fit onto any plastic bottle to transform it into a hand-held filtration device in a bid to provide vulnerable communities with affordable access to clean drinking water.
Made from 3D-printed bioplastic and designed to be easy enough for a child to use, Filter Cap is screwed on like a regular lid but with openings on both sides so that two bottles can be combined into a simple hourglass structure, filtering the water as it passes through the lid at the centre.
An initial trial saw a thousand Filter Caps distributed to native communities in Colombia’s deserts, providing 10,000 people with safe drinking water and reclaiming over 300,000 litres of water in two months.
Find out more about the Filter Cap ›
At Paris Fashion Week in March, fashion brand Coperni unveiled a bag made from 99 per cent air. The remaining one per cent is made from a silica aerogel, which has a chemical composition similar to gas and was developed by NASA for deep-space satellites.
Despite its apparent delicacy, weighing in at only 35 grams, the material is far from fragile and can handle pressure of 4,000 times its weight, according to researcher Ioannis Michaloudis who worked on the development of both the material and the bag.
“It can withstand three times the speed of a bullet,” Michaloudis told Dezeen. “That’s why [NASA] has selected the material to catch stardust.”
Find out more about Air Swipe ›
The winner of this year’s Dezeen Award for sustainable consumer design went to a sofa made from 99 per cent natural and renewable materials, hoping to reform a product category which is “probably the most challenging in terms of sustainability”.
Toja features a frame made from cork, harvested without harming the tree, while latex was wrapped in wool wadding and used for padding instead of polyurethane foam – a hard-to-recycle type of plastic containing toxic chemicals.
Unlike notoriously hard-to-recycle traditional sofas, it was designed to have a simple structure with all fixings internally visible so it can be easily disassembled and its individual elements recycled.
Octo Finissimo Ultra Cosc by Bulgari
This year saw Bulgari reclaim its crown as the maker of the world’s thinnest mechanical watch with the release of the Octo Finissimo Ultra Cosc.
With a thickness of 1.7 millimetres, it beat the previous record holder by about the breadth of a human hair by optimising its sapphire crystal front.
“Through patient, meticulous incremental steps, the engineers were able to shave off that critical tenth of a millimetre,” Bulgair said.
Find out more about the Octo Finissimo Ultra Cosc ›
Brännboll gaming chair by IKEA
At Milan design week, IKEA launched a blow-up gaming chair made from sheets of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), which IKEA normally uses to make inflatable changing mats for babies.
The design is IKEA’s first successful attempt at inflatable furniture, following a failed experiement in the 1990s.
“We really wanted to make something that was lightweight, easy to transport and not filled with a lot of foam for the sake of affordability and recyclability,” IKEA product design developer Philip Dilé told Dezeen. “So we went with air.”
Find out more about Brännboll ›
Driven by the mission to allow more people to enjoy a bath at home – no matter how small their bathroom – Japanese manufacturer LIXIL created a fabric tub that can be hung up like a hammock.
Made from a single piece of woven polyester, the tub can be filled with up to 140 litres of water or folded and stowed away in a cardboard tube when not in use.
Unlike a solid bathtub, Bathtope was designed to hug the body when filled with water, saving up to 60 litres of water per sitting and creating a more comfortable womb-like bathing experience, according to LIXIL.
