SALT LAKE CITY– R-Zero, the first biosafety technology company dedicated to creating safer, healthier indoor spaces, today announced its flagship product, Arc, has been recognized as a Bronze winner for Health & Medical in the 2021 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Produced by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the 2021 edition of the prestigious IDEA program received the most entries in its 41-year history. Of these 2,087 entries from 25 countries, 234 designs were related to COVID-19.
Widely viewed as the most influential design awards program in North America, IDEA considers design innovation, benefit to users and benefit to society as part of its judging criteria. R-Zero’s Arc attained the Medical & Health Bronze award for its innovative and human-centric industrial design approach to hospital-grade UV-C disinfection. Launched in September 2020, Arc is the first IoT enabled, whole-room, UV disinfection device designed for dynamic environments outside of a hospital. Based on a highly efficient radial lamp design, the easy-to-operate device makes hospital-grade UV disinfection financially and operationally accessible to every organization and community, for the first time.
Unlike existing UV-C systems considered the gold standard in hospitals, Arc was designed from the ground up with the end-user in mind. Every element of the product was considered from a visual, functional and technical perspective. The result is an intuitive and human-centric design that gives Arc a sense of both optimism and approachability, ultimately allowing it to blend seamlessly into any environment. From large, locking casters to ensure ease of mobility throughout a facility, low center of gravity to prevent tipping, and a simple “push button” user interface – Arc’s intuitive design has enabled a technology previously reserved for hospitals, to be successful and easy to implement across every type of commercial space – from schools, to senior care facilities, sports venues, hotels, restaurants, offices – large and small – and everything in between.
R-Zero’s strategic design partner, Bould Design, led industrial design of the product, bringing critical-need safety-enabling technology to market in just five months.
“We designed Arc from the ground up, to empower organizations to take control of their environmental safety and well-being in these challenging times,” said Fred Bould, Principal and Founder of Bould Design. “We were determined to make Arc the most accessible and intuitive enterprise grade UV-C disinfection lamp on the planet. The striking and optimistic design expresses R-Zero’s commitment to science, health, and safety, while maintaining an easy to maneuver and operate form factor. The R-Zero team deserves a lot of credit for their willingness to embrace the design process and sweat the details.”
Arc’s powerful UV-C is proven to destroy 99.99% of surface and airborne pathogens [in 1,000 sq ft space] in just 7 minutes – without the use of chemicals, while IoT connectivity shares usage data in real time, providing organizations with a first-of-its-kind auditable trail of all disinfection activity. Setting the standard for intelligent and sustainable disinfection, Arc displaces harmful chemicals, while successfully resetting air and surfaces in any space – in minutes.
“When we first conceived of Arc, we knew we had an opportunity to not only rewrite the narrative around UV-C, but fundamentally change how society approaches the health and safety of shared indoor spaces – truly iconic products have the power to catalyze a paradigm shift, and that was our intention with Arc” said Grant Morgan, CEO and co-founder of R-Zero. “In partnership with Bould Design, we’ve successfully built a product that not only delivers greater efficacy than the legacy systems used in hospitals, but ultimately create a category-defining product that is enabling a higher standard of health and safety for millions of people across the country today. And we did it in five months.”
R-Zero has demonstrated there is a massive market for more effective, efficient, and sustainable methods of creating safer indoor environments. Today, the company is emerging as a world leader in delivering innovative biosafety technologies to address glaring gaps in society’s health protections against COVID-19, and all other common infectious diseases in the built environment.
