Aqua Libra Co at Clerkenwell Design Week

What a week! From 24^th to 26^th May, the Aqua Libra Co team were exhibiting at the 11^th Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW). This year, after being postponed in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, the award-winning festival was back with flying colours.

Clerkenwell Design Week 2022

Clerkenwell forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington and is home to more creative and cutting-edge businesses per square mile than anywhere else in the world.

The parish, which dates from the early 12^th century, took its name from the clerks’ well, which was located in the boundary wall of St Mary’s Nunnery in Farringdon Lane. (A clerk was a clergyman or literate person.) In the Middle Ages, Londoners would travel annually to Clerkenwell just to see the parish clerks perform biblical plays.

The well was closed around the middle of the 19^th century, but in 1924, it was rediscovered during building work. Clerks’ Well is now incorporated into Well Court, an office block built in the 1980s.

In the 21^st century, people are flocking to Clerkenwell each year, not to see clergymen perform plays, but for Clerkenwell’s famous Design Week – and not just from London, but from all over the UK and other parts of the world. The popularity of CDW means that Clerkenwell can get a bit crowded and travelling to and from the festival can be hard work. However, on the first day of CDW this year, the central section of the new Elizabeth railway line opened for service, connecting Clerkenwell’s Farringdon Station to many other London districts. Getting to Clerkenwell will be a lot easier from now on.

CDW is the UK’s leading independent design festival, featuring 10 exhibition venues, over 150 showrooms, and more than 400 events, including Conversations at Clerkenwell, a series of daily talks seeking to explore a broad range of topics by drawing on insight from business leaders and creative designers.

In 2020, CDW was awarded the title of Best UK Tradeshow (2,000-8,000 m²) by the Association of Event Organisers (AEO). The festival was praised for being an ambitious and creative event that embraces sustainability and stretches the boundaries of the traditional tradeshow.

Aqua Libra Co at Clerkenwell

Clerkenwell Design Week 2022 was a superb opportunity for us to showcase our expanding range of innovative, energy-efficient water dispensers and to demonstrate how an engaging user interface, smart-reporting technology, and the capacity to deliver hundreds of cups of chilled and boiling water per hour can help promote a refill culture.

At Aqua Libra Co, we have a hydration solution for every workplace, hospitality venue, and retail space. With a focus on performance, aesthetics, and sustainability, and through continuous collaboration with architects and interior designers, our technicians have created a distinct product range to fulfil the needs of any organisation. CDW 2022 presented the perfect opportunity to showcase our products to the thousands of architects, specifiers, company owners, and directors of non-profit organisations who came to Clerkenwell to see first-hand the latest innovations in design technology.

It's not every day that we get a chance to show off our water dispensers to so many people! It was great to talk to people about what makes Aqua Libra Co products different.

Our difference

• Straightforward user interface with the option of touchless control means that our water dispensers are accessible to everyone.
• With the opportunity to refill, users can make a huge contribution towards eliminating single-use plastic.
• When a dispenser is installed, our engineers ensure that the customer understands how the unit works and how to take care of it.
• Because all our units are totally limescale free, they’re more energy efficient than any of our competitors’ products. This means that running costs and maintenance costs are lower, and the environment benefits from low energy consumption.
• Our taps are beautiful. From the pure lines of Aqua illi, to the simple elegance of Aqua Alto … from the silky-smooth finish of satin black or the reflective gleam of chrome, to Aqua Alto’s near-infinite range of colour … our stylish designs add an element of pleasure to a highly functional piece of equipment.

Our stand at CDW 2022

When we tell people that an Aqua Libra Co unit fits into a cupboard 60 cm (W) x 60 cm (D) x 90 cm (H), it’s not unusual for the response to be one of disbelief. So we thought the best way to get this information across to potential customers was to show them. In glass-front cabinets, with blue LED illumination, we showcased three key installs:

1. Aqua illi tap (boiling, chilled, and ambient) in matt black with round drip tray
2. Three Aqua Alto taps (boiling, chilled, and sparkling) in pastel pink, green, and blue
3. Aqua Bottler (120 litre capacity) with mechanical tap

Through the glass, visitors could see how the twin boiler, chiller, carbonator, purifier, feed and wastewater pipes, and leak detector can all fit snugly in a cupboard that’s only 60 cm wide and 60 cm deep.

Also on display:

• The smart, gesture-controlled Aqua Touchless
• Countertop Aqua Bottler, featuring two Alto taps in blue and green
• Represented by a 6 m² image on the stand, our newest product, the Flavour Tap

There’s already been a lot of interest in the Flavour Tap, which is the UK’s first pure water and flavour digital dispense tap. Built on an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Flavour Tap uses micro-dosing technology to combine natural fruit flavours with fresh, filtered water. Hundreds of visitors to the stand took away complimentary cans of Aqua Libra flavoured drinks as a taste of what’s to come.

We also gave away goodie bags. Each complimentary eco-bag contained a notepad made of recycled paper, a bamboo pen, and a refillable water bottle. The bottles, which came in an assortment of colours – black, blue, green, orange, and pink – were a big hit!

Our live display area featured the Aqua Alto tap, from which visitors to the stand were invited to refill drinking bottles with still, chilled water.

At CDW, we launched the Aqua Libra Co product brochure for 2022, which includes:

• New details for the Aqua Link centralised water distribution system
• A new range of bottles
• Aqua Libra Flavour Tap

Clerkenwell Design Week is all about innovation and creativity. This year, Aqua Libra Co was the first company to present its product range on a huge LED tiled wall. The display attracted a lot of interest and set a new standard when it comes to engaging customers.

Contact Aqua Libra Co

If you would like to talk to us about providing employees and customers with sustainable hydration solutions, give us a call on 0800 080 6696 or email hello@aqualibra.com. We look forward to talking to you.