South Korean tyre manufacturer, Kumho is no stranger to winning international design awards. For the second year running, they’re guaranteed a prize in the automotive and transport category of America’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA).
This time around, the product that drew the judges attention is the “BON tyre” which stands for “Birth On Nature”; interesting name indeed. The quirk with this new design is that instead of relying on air to hold itself much like conventional tyres, the BON’s design was inspired by nature’s bone structure.
Mimicking a kind of “voronoi architecture” (essentially a mesh-like design) such as the shape of leaf cells or the honeycomb, it achieves the required level of structural stability and efficiency without the need for any form of inflation.
Senior managing director of Kumho’s R&D headquarters, Jeong Taek-Gyun said: “It is very rewarding that Kumho’s latest example of futuristic design and technology has been recognised by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), and means Kumho becomes the first passenger tyre manufacturer to win all three of the world’s top design accolades – Germany’s Red Dot and iF Design and America’s IDEA awards – two years in a row.”
