Prestigious design award for stylish door handle

New product receives red dot design award 2022

With the sleek and graceful Shiraat, Grand&Johnson has not only delivered a tasteful design for a door handle line, the Amsterdam-based design studio is making a clear statement at the same time. Shiraat is the result of a search for minimalism and simplicity, designed with pure attention and a keen eye for detail. Rhenen-based Intersteel, manufacturer of door and window hardware with related accessories, took care of the technical implementation of the door handle. The joining of forces between the two companies produced a tremendously beautiful result. Indeed, the Shiraat, the stylish "jewel for a door," was recently awarded the Red Dot Design Award, the annual international prize for design. 

Grand&Johnson fully embraced the challenge of using the same door handle to create both an eye-catcher and design object. Along the way, the design studio answered several central questions. What does minimal mean? What happens when you leave out everything unnecessary? What does the anatomy of the minimum look like? The challenge during this quest lay in finding the purest form of a door handle. At the same time, the product had to be an ornament for a door and thus for the interior. 

Slim design

The end result that came out of the design quiver at Grand&Johnson was an exclusive, slenderly designed and stainless steel door handle with a length of no less than 250 mm. A dimension significantly different from the standard length of a door handle, which is usually 125 mm. The design features geometric shapes that are thoughtfully and harmoniously connected. 

"The Shiraat is available in four different finishes: brushed stainless steel, matte brass PVD, matte black PVD and matte copper PVD," says Ilona Keen, marketing & communications manager at Intersteel. "Matching accessories, such as a keyhole rosette, profile cylinder hole or toilet/bathroom lock, are also available through Intersteel." 

New spring mechanism

The Shiraat features a new spring mechanism. Due to the length of the door handle, the spring in the rosette is more heavily loaded than with shorter door handles. This spring ensures that the handle springs back to its horizontal position after use. Especially for the Shiraat lever handle, Intersteel developed a new spring mechanism based on tension springs, which can handle a heavier load. 

Outstanding design

The sleek and graceful Shiraat is the end result of an intensive collaboration between Grand&Johnson and Intersteel, which, as a manufacturer of stylish door and window hardware, understands the art of combining modern technologies with elegant design. 

"To achieve a perfect design, in addition to a hefty dose of creativity and technical know-how, a good interplay between all parties is essential," believes Bertel Grote, who together with Jeroom Jansen owns the design studio that was started in 2010. 

"The Shiraat is a prime example of that." 

The successful joining of forces between the two companies is further evidenced by the fact that the design was recently awarded the highly regarded Red Dot Product Design Award 2022, an award given by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen only to products with "outstanding design.