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as mentioned in a previous post I recently visited a design museum in shenzhen and while already in an inspired mood I saw a plate in the gift shop and it kicked off a flight of ideas about exploring the materiality of cups which led me to doing a few quick blender sketches of cups designed to use their thermal mass to keep drinks cold. an image of the inspiring plate

the cylindrical sketches

given that the plate was round, and cups are usually round it seems only natural to start from a primitive cylinder.

CL-1

here we take the obvious first step and have thick walls all around providing a nice heavy layer of insulation all around, albeit at the expensive of being cumbersome and nearly impossible to drink out of. wide concentric close concentric

CL-2

The question thus becomes whats a good way of making the cup usable while still playing with the impression of thickness and mass, why not simply move the hole toward the edge to creat a lip. wide, hole near edge close, hole near edge

CL-3

or put the hole at an angle wide, hole is at an angle close, hole is at an angle

CL-4

or what about tapering but still keeping it offcenter for fun? wide, tapered hole close, tapered hole

the square sketches

Then I asked myself if maybe a rectangular prism would feel better visually and created a couple cuboidal sketches.

SQ-1

a square take on CL-2 wide, square CL-2 close, square CL-2

SQ-2

a square take on CL-4 wide, square CL-2 close, square CL-2

the other one

while thinking about using the glass as a whiskey stone i though why not simply build in an icecube/whiskey stone?

wide, "ice cube" close, "ice cube"