International award for Comansa’s CUBE cab

Offices with the best view to the city are highly coveted by the executives of large companies. And if they are located in the higher floors, these work places tend to be more spacious, comfortable and with a spectacular design. In the case of tower crane operators, the great views are not usually a problem, but it really was having a workspace that would perfectly combine comfort, productivity and design... until manufacturer Comansa launched its CUBE cabin at the end of 2017.

BigD, the Spanish industrial design studio who conceived the cabin, decided to submit the project to the prestigious iF Awards, and the commitment to improve the working conditions of the crane operator was the winner in the section on vehicles and automotive, which fitted best to tower cranes. The award was presented last March 9 in Munich, Germany.

For Comansa and BigD, this award represents the icing on the cake of a project that took almost two years to complete. According to Alberto Munárriz, Comansa’s General Manager, "the iF award recognizes the great work of BigD, who knew how to put themselves on the shoes of a crane operator from anywhere in the world to offer him a pleasant work space with the greatest possible comfort. In addition, the CUBA cab offers an innovative aesthetic design, very different from what the market offered so far, and includes all of the technical requirements that we needed to add to the cabin as a fundamental part of the crane".

"A prestigious award, if it is given by a totally independent body, is a double prize," says Adrián Larripa, CEO of BigD. "What the jury appreciated isn´t only the purely aesthetic appearance, but the whole project. The CUBE cab is a small portion of the product tower crane, but it is its nerve centre in the handling and control of the loads. Thanks to a comprehensive analysis of the experience of use of the crane operator, we created a completely user-centered cab design, providing huge comfort and increasing the cab’s capacity to implement new crane functions that could arise for future needs. This project also led us to engage with suppliers to achieve these improvements with a reasonable impact on the cost of the cab".

BigD is a products and services design and innovation consultancy, expert in Design Thinking processes, Industrial design and Digital interface. "At BigD we specialise in user-centred design, achieved through what is called Design Thinking. This design methodology, rather than confront problems in a linear fashion - the most common in the engineering field - does it through a more orbital process, in which many options are explored, rapid prototypes and tests are carried out and the option with better results is chosen. It is a process of continuous improvement that, in this case, resulted in a very innovative cabin even in non-aesthetic aspects as it is the comfort of the user", explains the CEO of BigD (www.bigd.es).