Santa & Cole’s HeadHat scoops two awards

This innovative pendant light system wins the Delta Gold and Red Dot Design 2013 awards.

Last June, HeadHat, a new pendant light system designed by Santa & Cole, won the Delta Gold award of 2013, presented in Barcelona, adding another honour to the Spanish company’s earlier triumph in February – scooping the Red Dot Design 2013 award in Essen, Germany. Delta Gold’s international jury chose HardHat from a shortlist of 47 designs for its well-resolved design, simplicity, honesty of materials and for its flexibility as an LED lighting system.

HardHat is a composite system of pendant lights comprising shades in different sizes and materials, such as aluminium and ceramic, called Hats, which multiply the uses of its ingenious light capsule, or Head. HeadHat sprung from Santa & Cole’s determination to create its own LED ‘lightbulb’ which also replaces the conventional shade fixture (socket and bulb), thereby minimising the components needed and making it easy and practical to use. The LED capsule’s shape was inspired by the flat geometry of ubiquitous, flat coffee capsules. HeadHat brings together diversity, user-friendliness, technology and functionality, and casts a warm, even light. The next stage for the team is to develop shades and ‘hats’ for the new ‘lightbulb’ and so create an interchangeable ecology.

This is the first time Santa & Cole’s in-house team of designers and engineers has won the Delta Gold award for one of its products. However, it did receive the Delta Gold award in 1961 – for its TMC lamp, designed by Miguel Milá, and for the Nagoya pendant shade, created by Ferrán Freixa, both designed externally.

The Delta industrial design prizes are Spain’s most prestigious, long-established prizes in this category of design. During their 53-year history, these have brought international recognition to the most emblematic examples of Spanish design from the 1960s to the present day. Both the winning and shortlisted pieces can be seen in an exhibition in Barcelona, El Mejor Diseño del Año (The Best Design of the Year), which is open to the public until October 31.