December 2008 • In Production
Plastic Surgery
RKS Design molds a safe new material into a futuristic and functional drinking vessel.
By Belinda Lanks
In 2005, Eric Barnes, a Southern California entrepreneur, hired RKS Design to devise a new kind of water bottle. It had to be reusable, durable, and dishwasher-safe—and it had to be made from a plastic that didn’t contain the chemical bisphenol-A, or BPA, which has been linked to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There was just one hitch: such a material didn’t yet exist. “We were scratching our heads,” Chris Glupker, of RKS, says. “Finally, we talked to a representative from Eastman Chemical Company who was working with us on plastic guitar bodies at the time. He said, ‘Well, we’ve got something in the works that you might be interested in.’” That something turned out to be Tritan, a copolyester (a new, high-performance polymer) with similar strength and clarity to BPA-laden polycarbonate.
With its crystal-blue body, white trim, and streamlined shape, the Kor One bottle is substantially slicker than its backpacking brethren. “We set out to do a very emotional, impactful design, something that would kind of beckon to people as a lifestyle product,” Glupker says. It’s also a paragon of functionality: the hinged lid flips open with the press of a button and forms a leak-proof seal when closed. Ultimately, the makers hope that the stylish design will deter users from buying throwaway water bottles. (Kor also takes back its product for disassembly and recycling.) Here Glupker talks about the making of Kor One, available for purchase at www.korwater.com.
Product dimensions
Height: 11.4 in.
Base width: 3.5 in.
Base depth: 2.6 in.
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We wanted to design an opening wide enough for ice cubes and that would allow water to be chugged. But we also wanted the rim to stay under your nose when you’re drinking, which constricts the maximum width.
Originally, we wanted it to be bigger so that you could put a full day’s supply of water—1.25 liters—in the bottle, but that would have made it enormous. We ended up ratcheting down to one liter from there and then finally settled on 750 milliliters.
We engineered this in such a way that it’s put together like a puzzle. The bottom kind of snaps the sides into place, and then the top is sonically welded. The process creates a completely sealed, rigid product.
A gate, or the dimple at the bottom of a plastic bottle, is something that all plastic parts have, but it’s not a very attractive feature to look at. Since we’re trying to keep the design very pure and elegant, we modified the tooling so that the gate area would be hidden by the side trim. And the rubberized base gives the bottle a soft landing when you put it on a table.
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