It’s ludicrous to think that someone wouldn’t want a fire extinguisher in their home or office just because it clashed with the room’s decor. But France’s Fire Design eliminates all excuses for not putting safety first with its line of designer extinguishers.
Sentences beginning in “What if we got a flamethrower and…” usually result in horrible, moronic, burnt disaster. But we’re glad director Tomas Mankovsky threw caution to the fiery wind to see what happens when a flamethrower meets a fire extinguisher.
When everyday devices become autonomous and start mating in the far future thanks to nanotechnology, items like fire extinguishers will become what designer Adam Scott has envisioned with the X Sting Wish. Mixing one part Dustbuster, one part machine gun, and a final part carbon fiber-wrapped fire extinguisher, Scott has managed to cook up a device that looks as at home in a kitchen as it would in Gears of War made real. There are even side-mounted LEDs for night missions. So, why make a lifesaving device like the fire extinguisher so, well, weapon-y? As the mock-ups reveal, it’s all about easy recognition in an emergency situation. Apparently, when fire strikes, people are more apt to reach for their shotguns than that red cylinder marked “FIRE EXTINGUISHER.”
Were the humble, boring old fire extinguisher to be reworked in the style of this concept design, dubbed Shooter, they’d be grabbed from the wall and used inappropriately in offices waaaay more frequently. Because, as its name suggests, the device is meant to behave like a friendly Nerf-style grenade launcher, aiming plastic pellets of CO2 into the flames. This has the advantage of keeping you away from the fire, with a better range than throw-style pellets, and less complication than a standard sprayer version. And more fun/danger at the office Christmas party too. [Yanko Design]