Hasta La Ideas

In the more dangerous New York of the early ’90s, the glassware of any off-the-radar nightlife spot was a dead giveaway to the sort of place it was. The ones that served drinks in plastic cups and had tin ashtrays were generally more trouble-prone. You knew this because one night you’d be at a place that used regular glasses, a fight would break out, and someone would get a glass, bottle or ashtray smashed into their face; next week you’d go back and all of the cups would be plastic.

I’d always naively thought of this as a bygone phenomenon, but apparently fighting with glassware is still an issue in Great Britain. According to statistics 5,500 Britons a year are involved in booze-fueled altercations that end in shattered glass and stitches, and the United Kingdom’s Home Office Minister Alan Campbell feels the problem can be solved through design: “Innovative design has played an important role in driving down overall crime, including theft, fraud and burglary,” said Campbell. The Home Office has thus commissioned a new plastic cup design for pubs.

Unsurprisingly, there’s opposition: The British Beer and Pub Association is naysaying the plan. “For the drinker, the pint glass feels better, it has a nice weight and the drink coats the glass nicely. That’s why people go out for a drink, to have a nice experience,” says Association member Neil Williams.

But Nick Verebelyi of the company Design Bridge, tasked with designing the new plastic cup, is determined to make it work.

“One [approach] is to coat the glass with a substance that will make sure the glass doesn’t shatter into pieces when it is broken – that could be a plastic material for example. But it would have to feel like an existing pint glass to the consumer.”

Mr Verebelyi [is] also looking at changing the pint altogether.

“We could do something more radical, by looking at the whole shape and substance of the pint–we could come up with something that is completely different to glass.

“Remember that years ago people used to drink out of pewter tankards. It could be quite a significant paradigm shift.”

via bbc news

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