AWARD YEAR
2019
CATEGORY
Community
GOALS
Good Health & Well-being
KEYWORDS
breastfeeding difficulties, Inclusive design, Smart Cities
COUNTRY
Czech Republic
DESIGNED BY
52hours
Design Team:
Nikola Kneževi?, chief industrial designer
Ivana Preiss, product designer
Filip Vasi?, creative director
WEBSITE
https://www.inviteheer.com
heer - bench for comfortable breastfeeding in public spaces.
With Heer, entire cities and communities become friendlier and more accessible to moms and babies.
Heer is the world’s first ergonomically designed bench that enables mothers to comfortably breastfeed in public spaces. Heer rotates, so moms can choose a position that suits them best. It gently rocks and calms both mom and baby. It has shields to offer privacy to moms that need it, and to protect babies from distraction when nursing. Heer is the first design-driven solution to the controversy of breastfeeding in public, which finds the middle ground between the natural needs and often antagonistic cultural norms, between comfort and discretion. Although breastfeeding in public becomes increasingly accepted, for various cultural, psychological or other reasons many mothers still feel uneasy about it. On the other hand, the places purposed for breastfeeding are rare, poorly designed, isolated and uncomfortable. Above all, they practically reinforce exclusion of mothers. Instead of isolating mums, Heer enables moms to stay in the environment they want to be in and keep control of it.