Fire hydrants are necessary evil that stick out like a sore thumb in any location. They are a common sight that most city dwellers have learned to live with, or simply ignore them. However, industrial design graduate Dimitri Nassisi harbors a bold idea of changing this necessary amenity into something more purposeful. He wants to turn fire hydrants into drinking fountain for people and pets. How so? Well, by redesigning the entire fire hydrant, of course.
The idea was born when Nassisi observed there aren’t enough drinking fountains to keep the public hydrated and building new drinking fountains could be costly and puts the city through unnecessary inconveniences. Since fire hydrants are already in place, Nassisi thought why not leverage on the existing infrastructure and hence, the Water Fountain Fire Hydrant. The concept not only makes largely utilized hydrant purposeful, but it also kind of takes the sore thumb of the picture.
What use to be a typically red, yellow, purple or blue, midget structure that sometime pedestrians walked into is now a tall, beautiful fountain that I still capable of serving its core duty of providing pressurized water for fire fighting when unfortunate fire do occurs. Enabling a fire hydrant to serve both as regular pressure water supply for drinking and high pressure supply for fire fighting is a double valve system which can be adjusted based on its application. There is even a dog bowl integrated at the foot of the hydrant, so pets could quench their thirst too.
I am not going to lie. On the first take, this looks to be an excellent concept, but if you look deeper, there are more to it than a simple hardware swap. On one hand, we would love to see this concept materializes, but deep down, I have an unsettling feeling about ‘tampering’ with safety.
Images: Dimitri Nassisi.
Source: The Gadgeteer.
