Design Awards for the Hansgrohe Group: Confirmation, Compliment, and Incentive

Red Dot Award, iF Award, German Design Award: They’re all in the trophy cabinet 

The AXOR and hansgrohe brands regularly put their faucets, showers, and accessories to the test and let them be judged by external design experts. Among the more than 600 international design prizes won since 1974 are awards like the iF GOLD AWARD and the Red Dot: Best of the Best Award.

Such honors confirm our achievements and show that we are on the right track with our design philosophy. Together with our designers, we combine premium product quality with extraordinary product design and optimal customer benefit. That is what makes us successful.

Top placements in the iF World Design Index: Confirmation of our design philosophy

The iF WORLD DESIGN INDEX lists the most successful, internal company design teams, design studios, and design-oriented companies. In the International Forum Design (iF)'s iF WORLD DESIGN INDEX 2015 – 2019, the Hansgrohe Group ranks among the very top. In the current 2019 ranking of the best companies in the world for design, the Hansgrohe Group, with its brands AXOR and hansgrohe, ranks in the TOP10 among 4,215 listed companies. We outperform famous brands such as Apple, Audi or Daimler and reconfirm the company’s leading position in the bathroom industry.

The valuation for the index is made up of the iF AWARD winners from the past five years, depending on the type and number of iF AWARDS won. In 2019, eight AXOR and hansgrohe branded products received an iF DESIGN AWARD 2019. In 2018, products by the AXOR and hansgrohe brands received nine iF DESIGN AWARDS. Among the winners were the hansgrohe SilicaTec sink combination C51, the AXOR ShowerHeaven 1200, and the hansgrohe Raindance E shower pipe.

Distinction of excellence: the iF AWARD in Gold

Special weight is given in the evaluation to the iF GOLD AWARDS. 2017, we received the International Forum Design's gold medal for the AXOR Uno collection, created jointly with Phoenix Design. Among more than 5,500 submissions from 59 countries, iF bestowed just 75 "iF GOLD AWARDS" for outstanding design, quality, processing, environmental sustainability, functionality, and innovation.

2019 our brand hansgrohe was presented with the iF gold award for its new Rainfinity shower range. The jury’s reasoning is yet another confirmation of our design philosophy: “The Rainfinity shower range combines excellent craftsmanship with consistent proportions and an impressive mix of materials. With its contrasting black and white, hansgrohe offers an outstanding alternative to the characteristic chrome look of conventional taps.”

Red Dot Awards: Coveted seal of quality for product design

The extensive list of design prizes for the Hansgrohe Group includes numerous Red Dot Awards. Once a year, a jury of 40 judges selects the best products out of around 17,000 annual submissions from over 70 nations for this award. This makes the design award, which has its origins back in 1955, one of the largest and most renowned design competitions in the world. The Red Dot is considered a special seal of quality: Best of the Best – a distinction only the best products in a category receive. Among the award winners of recent years are
 

• the AXOR Starck Organic lavatory faucets,
• the AXOR Showerpipe designed by Front, and
• the hansgrohe C71 combination sinks.
• Most recently the hansgrohe Rainfinity family of showers and
• the AXOR Edge collection crowned their market entrance with the title of Red Dot: Best of Best.

Pioneering in the design landscape: The German Design Award

"A price that makes success visible." This is how the German Design Council, founded in 1953 as a foundation on the initiative of the German Bundestag, describes its German Design Award. The German brand and design authority discovers and presents unique design trends, and furthers the design-oriented economy with its competition.

In the 2019 competition, the German Design Award distinguished the AXOR ShowerPipe 800. Developed in collaboration with Phoenix Design, the shower system is rightly one of only 50 Gold-distinguished products by the jury. „AXOR has achieved with its ShowerPipe 800 more than exceeds all expectations, from the standpoint of both form and function. The AXOR ShowerPipe 800 water guiding system stands out from the competition already at first glance, thanks to its delicate design, which is reduced to the essentials, and its elemental design language – which does not visually dominate the bathroom decor, but instead merely rounds it out with elegant understatement."

Double win in 2020: hansgrohe, our premium brand, received a German Design Award in Gold for the Aquno Select M81 kitchen faucet and for the digital RainTunes shower experience.

Design awards: A test to put products through their paces

International design awards are seen as an accolade for product designers and manufacturers. Top-class expert juries don't just evaluate products in terms of "good appearance." All factors around a product are decisive for the awarding of design awards such as the Red Dot Award, iF AWARD, and the German Design Award. Of course this includes design quality, but also degree of innovation, functionality, ergonomics, and durability. Added to that are the symbolic and emotional content, the product periphery, self-explanatory quality, and ecological compatibility.

In short, products are put through their paces in design competitions and evaluated according to criteria that go beyond the apparent design.