KETTLE - Repairable Kettle Concept

Challenge

The electric kettle is one of the most repeated product design briefs and one of the most rarely resolved with conviction. The challenge was not to reinvent the kettle but to ask, stripped of assumptions, what a kettle actually needs to be — and to remove every element that was not a direct answer to that question.

Process

The project began with an ergonomic audit of handle grip, pour angle, fill access, and balance across a wide range of existing kettles. What emerged was a set of functional requirements that most designs satisfy in unnecessarily complex ways. Form development explored how the minimum resolution to each requirement could produce a coherent whole, with material choices driven by thermal performance, weight, and tactile quality in hand.

Outcome

The kettle has a single dominant material logic and a spout geometry derived directly from pour-angle testing. It reads as inevitable — as if there were no other way to resolve the brief — which is the intended effect. The object earns its place on the counter without asking for attention.