no. the UnBRELLA Upside Down Umbrella is not an umbrella that have just met with a terrible storm – it is intentionally designed to be inverted, hence the name. you could say the UnBRELLA is sort of a revolution in umbrella design because it actually takes a stab at two pesky problems associated with traditional umbrellas, which like most things in life, remains largely unchanged for decades. it opens like a regular umbrella, but instead of having the canopy opening upwards, the inverted design has it opening downwards. this is the single most important part of the equation that offers two advantages.
first: it makes getting in and out of a vehicle easier during wet weather while having more of your body shielded from the rain, and two, when collapsed, the wet side of the umbrella will be facing inwards, thereby temporary containing the water from dripping all over and causing unnecessary annoyance to other folks. the latter has an indirect impact to the environment too. if every umbrella adopt such design, shopping malls and commercial establishments would not need to issue plastic sleeves for customers to contain the wet brolly in a bid to prevent them from getting the complex wet. that, needless to say, will lead to less wastage of materials and reduce waste. it is kind of a long term impact, we would say. still it is a positive impact.
finally, an inverted design also brings about an ancillary benefit and that is, the umbrella can now stand on its own without leaning against anything structure which more often than not, runs the risk of falling over and creating a hazard. the mechanism to execute this design is no doubt complex, but the change is necessary and long overdue. the UnBRELLA Upside Down Umbrella is available for pre-order through H-Concept (and probably only to the Japanese market) for 9,450 Yen (about US$90) a pop. shipment is expected to be in April 2014. catch a short clip in the embedded video below to see the UnBRELLA in action.
