Iron Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Products Design · 2025
Storm Vspec IV Smart Corner Fan
- A' Design Award 2025 Iron Winner in Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Products Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Point One Technology Pte. Ltd.
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 18,784
- Verification code 3F478A82A1 · Verify this award
About Storm Vspec IV Smart Corner Fan
The Storm Smart Corner Fan is a cooling solution designed for compact spaces and smart homes. Its dual axis movement allows for all around spatial coverage. The fan is energy efficient and reduces reliance on air conditioning. It is also smart home enabled, giving users full digital control of its features. With elegantly crafted curves, Storm blends visual sophistication and mechanical innovation, setting a new standard in contemporary and functional fan design.
Point One Technology Pte. Ltd.'s Storm Vspec IV Smart Corner Fan represents a thoughtful contribution to the evolving landscape of residential climate control equipment, where functional performance increasingly engages with aesthetic and spatial considerations that extend beyond purely utilitarian design approaches. Emerging from contemporary industrial design traditions that privilege material honesty, mechanical transparency, and geometric clarity, this corner-mounted ventilation solution demonstrates how engineering constraints can generate compelling visual form when approached with design intentionality rather than merely functional pragmatism. The work situates itself within the broader design conversation surrounding smart home integration and space-optimizing technologies, addressing the perennial challenge of effective air circulation in residential environments where traditional ceiling-mounted fans may prove spatially impractical or architecturally incompatible, particularly in corner zones, small rooms, or spaces with unconventional ceiling configurations. The designer's compositional achievement manifests most evidently in the articulated joint system that connects the motor housing to the blade assembly, where spherical and cylindrical mechanical nodes create a kinetic sculpture of sorts, transforming what might have been concealed connection hardware into an expressive formal element that celebrates rather than disguises the product's functional anatomy. This approach aligns with design traditions that embrace mechanical honesty and structural expression, where the logic of engineering becomes part of the aesthetic vocabulary, inviting appreciation of how things work as integral to their visual appeal. The chromatic strategy demonstrates sophisticated restraint through its duotone palette, employing matte black for all mechanical and structural components in a color choice that conveys technological seriousness, engineered precision, and contemporary industrial character, while introducing warm wood-toned blades that provide essential visual and conceptual counterpoint, suggesting natural material engagement, residential warmth, and organic reference that prevents the design from reading as purely technological apparatus. This material and chromatic dialogue between cool industrial blacks and warm natural wood tones represents a carefully calibrated balance that positions the product as both high-performance equipment and domestically integrated design object, suitable for contemporary residential environments where technological infrastructure increasingly occupies visible rather than concealed positions within living spaces. The three-blade configuration, rendered with gently curved surfaces that suggest aerodynamic optimization, demonstrates how functional requirements for efficient air movement can generate visually satisfying forms, the blade geometry creating rhythmic circular repetition around the central hub while the organic wood grain patterns running lengthwise along each blade provide linear directional emphasis that reinforces the rotational movement inherent to the product's operation. The designer's attention to edge definition, surface finish, and mechanical detail resolution throughout the assembly suggests manufacturing quality and design refinement that elevate this beyond purely commodity-level appliance design toward the realm of considered industrial design where small decisions about proportion, material, finish, and articulation collectively establish product character and user perception. The corner-mounting functionality addresses a genuine spatial innovation opportunity, recognizing that corners represent underutilized zones in many residential spaces, and that directing ventilation from corner positions can create beneficial air circulation patterns that differ from traditional ceiling-center fan placement, potentially improving comfort while reducing visual and spatial impact in the room's primary volume. How might this approach to mechanical expression and material dialogue in functional climate control equipment inspire broader reconsideration of how residential infrastructure technologies balance performance requirements with aesthetic integration, and what role does visible engineering play in contemporary design culture's appreciation of functional objects as worthy of contemplative attention beyond their utilitarian service?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The Storm Smart Corner Fan is a cooling solution for compact spaces and smart homes, designed for Singapore’s heat. It provides powerful cooling, saves energy, and reduces reliance on air conditioning. Storm's dual axis control maximises coverage. With elegantly crafted curves, Storm blends visual sophistication and mechanical innovation, setting a new standard in contemporary and functional fan design.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Overall dimensions,
- Width: 405mm
- Depth: 405mm
- Height: 500mm
Fan Blade Dimension,
- Diameter: 405mm
Packaging Dimension,
- Width: 450mm
- Depth: 550mm
- Height: 270mm
Width and depth are based on the diameter of the fan blade. Height measured from the ceiling to the lowest point of the fan blade.
Specifications,
- Power: 2W - 12W
- Input: 110-240V
- Magnet: Permanent
- Ball Bearings: Ceramic
- Converter: Brushless
- Rotation Gearbox: 1-speed (1:4.8 gearing)
- Fan Gearbox: 7-speed (1:1.22:1.44:1.66:1.88:2.11:2.32) - Tags
- Corner Fan, Ceiling Fan, Smart Fan, Smart Corner Fan, Fan, Singapore, Singapore Corner Fan, Storm Corner Fan
- Production Technology
- At the core of Storm’s flexibility is its dual axis technology and control system, allowing for 360 deg horizontal and 60 deg vertical range of motion. We also built smart home features into the driver, reducing additional chip production.
We use ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) for the blade and exterior casings; its strength to weight ratio is ideal for a ceiling mounted fan. The casing has a snap on design, reducing screws and materials required. - Design Challenge
- During the product development phase, we encountered significant difficulties in creating a mechanical assembly that could achieve the dual-axis movement needed while being robust, compact, and producable at scale. We also faced problems with smart home app integration due to our integrated chip approach. Nonetheless, we were committed to delivering a quality product that consumers deserve. The product development took longer, but we ultimately overcame these technical challenges.
- Project Duration
- Storm was first conceptualised in December 2021 in Singapore. The ideation, research, and design phase lasted 8 months, with the team focusing on key features and trends in design and market demand. Product Development started in August 2022, and this included material selection and component integration. This process lasted 14 months.
Our first prototype was ready for testing in October 2023, and the first production-ready batch was achieved in November 2024. - Operation Flow
- Storm is a smart corner fan perfect for compact spaces and smart homes. It has a dedicated remote and can be fully controlled using a smartphone or voice through compatible smart home suites: Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Samsung SmartThings.
Storms can rotate in either the horizontal or vertical direction or both simultaneously. It also allows a user to direct airflow to a particular area in their space or to have the fan continuously cover a wide area. - Research
- Type of Research:
Qualitative research
Research Objectives:
- Identify desired functions, pain points of fans, and space-related concerns to guide the design process.
- Identify key product features that are desirable (sales data-based)
Methodology:
Surveys and focus group sessions with consumers and retailers.
Data Collection and Research Tools Used:
Individuals: Online surveys
Retailers: In-person focus group sessions
Participants or Experiments:
Individuals: 57 Participants. Ages 25-44, Singapore Residents
Retailers: 6 Retailers, Singapore-based
Results, Insights, and Impacts:
Smaller apartment sizes in Singapore make big ceiling fans less practical, while standing fans occupy valuable floor space.
Clients seek versatile ventilation solutions to reduce air conditioning reliance, especially in limited spaces.
Retailers prefer a modern and neutral design that works for various interior styles.
Effect of the Research on Real-Life Phenomena:
This research suggests that consumers are environmentally and energy (cost) conscious. Space and versatility of cooling are important to homeowners. Fan design is also a significant consideration, as it needs to match the interior design style. - Inspiration
- Project Storm represents our belief that ceiling fans can be stylish and practical as a cooling solution.
Based in Singapore, we are all too familiar with the country’s tropical hot and humid climate. Cooling solutions such as fans or air-conditioning systems are important considerations for households, with the latter being much more expensive, energy intensive, and non environmentally friendly.
Although traditional fan solutions may be energy efficient and powerful, they do have a key drawback: their coverage area. Ceiling fans can provide wide coverage, but the coverage area is fixed. On the other hand, standing or desk fans take up valuable space and are usually encased in shielding that rarely contributes to aesthetics.
With Singapore’s National Environment Agency’s push for households to purchase more energy efficient appliances through the Climate Friendly Households Programme (CFHP), we knew fans had a place in Singaporean homes and we could make it better. Storm is the culmination of our 20 years of design and manufacturing experience, combining functionality and design in a complete package. - Image Credits
- All Rights belong to Point One Technology Pte. Ltd.
The website pointonetechnology.com is being rebuilt, links may not work as intended. - Patents
- Patenting Pending
Colors of Storm Vspec IV Smart Corner Fan
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Smart Cooling Solutions for Modern Living
We design and manufacture innovative smart fans engineered for Southeast Asia's unique climate and compact living spaces. Our energy-efficient cooling solutions feature dual-axis technology, smart home integration, and modern aesthetics that complement contemporary interiors while reducing reliance…
G0E7 ShopGrand Interview about Storm Vspec IV Smart Corner Fan
From the outset, we knew Storm would be an engineering challenge. Although it was not our first corner-mounted fan, it was the first to feature a compact dual-axis mechanism, remote-controlled tilt and sweep movements, all housed in a form factor smaller than anything we had built before. To achieve this, we redesigned the entire gearing assembly to support both a 105-degree or full 360-degree rotation, depending on user preference, while ensuring smooth operation without wobble, drift, or long-term wear. We relied heavily on 3D printing for prototyping, using it to test multiple gear configurations and component placements. Once we met our dimensional and performance targets, we moved into small-batch production for endurance, thermal, and airflow testing before committing to full mass production.
Singapore’s apartment sizes have decreased steadily over the decades, with today’s homes roughly 7% smaller than those in the 1990s. All this while our tropical climate has become significantly hotter. Many modern floorplans feature narrow rooms or irregular layouts that simply cannot accommodate large ceiling fans. These constraints formed the foundation of Storm’s design. We needed a fan that delivered full-room ventilation while occupying a small ceiling footprint.Storm was our natural solution to this insight, a corner fan for the Singapore home: tucked neatly into a corner, occupying zero floor space, yet capable of delivering powerful, room-wide airflow. Its success speaks for itself, with Storm quickly becoming one of our best-selling models, and demand often exceeding our production capacity.
What makes Storm exceptional is its ability to deliver strong airflow across an entire room while operating at just 12W. This makes it significantly more energy-efficient than standing fans of similar blade sizes and even more efficient than many traditional ceiling fans. Its smart-home features enhance this efficiency further. Users can track real-time power consumption, automate with schedules, or activate geo-location triggers to turn the fan off when leaving home. Combined with an EC-Motor that is more efficient than DC-Motors, Storm empowers homeowners to reduce their carbon footprint while enjoying the convenience of modern smart-home living.
Ceiling-mounted fans have historically leaned toward an industrial, function-first aesthetic with sharp angles for easier fabrication, bulky housings for off-the-shelf components, and exposed screws for straightforward installation. We believe function and beauty should co-exist. A fan is a long-term fixture and it should elevate a space, not distract from it. Comfort is delivered not only through airflow, but through the visual harmony of the home environment. With Storm, we designed beyond existing trends. We aimed to shape what future ceiling-mounted designs could look like, intentional forms that conceal the mechanical complexity within.
Integrating the EC-Motor’s control chip into a compact form-factor presented unique engineering challenges. It needed to sit close to the motor for optimal control, but this exposed it to elevated temperatures and electrical noise. These issues were made more severe by Storm’s redesigned, tightly-packaged motor architecture. Several prototypes failed before we isolated the root cause. The solution required improved electronic shielding, redesigned control circuitry, and the use of an aluminium motor casing to enhance thermal dissipation. These refinements ultimately made Storm more reliable and robust than any corner fan we had built before.
Point One was among the first ceiling fan companies in Singapore to introduce smart-enabled fans for both residential and commercial spaces. This early start gave us deep experience integrating with major smart-home ecosystems. Storm builds on that foundation. It is designed to work seamlessly with the most widely adopted platforms as well as popular third-party systems used by homeowners today. Our in-house firmware team ensures consistent performance and reliable connectivity across all supported platforms.
This award reinforces our belief that ventilation solutions in Southeast Asia must be engineered specifically for our climate, not adapted as an afterthought. It motivates us to continue exploring unique ventilation solutions, such as the Storm corner fan, that address the real challenges faced by homeowners here. Most importantly, it strengthens our commitment to engineering excellence and thoughtful design, creating products that meet the needs of homes in this region.
Storm’s snap-on design significantly reduces part count, thereby minimising material usage and waste, while also simplifying final assembly. Its compact and lightweight design further reduces its environmental footprint during manufacturing, packaging and transport. In all areas, we strive to simplify and improve, delivering a high-performing corner fan while minimising its lifecycle carbon footprint in every way possible.
Air-conditioning is widespread in Singapore, yet our research showed a clear preference: homeowners prefer using fans whenever possible, resorting to air-conditioning only when the heat becomes unbearable. Utility costs play a role, but so does comfort and fans can provide that when airflow is properly delivered. When we paired this insight with the fact that households here often face restrictive room layouts that prevent the installation of a ceiling fan of the desired size, or are sometimes unable to install a ceiling fan at all, the opportunity became clear. Storm was designed to fill this gap and provide a high-performance, space-efficient ventilation solution that fits where ceiling fans cannot.
Storm has shown that airflow can be reimagined. We believe the future of ventilation is adaptive to one’s living space and lifestyle. We see a future where ventilation is smart, effortless, and inspiring; where form and function work in harmony. The Storm Smart Corner Fan marks the beginning of a new generation of ventilation solutions designed for homes of the future.