Maneuverable Emergency Barricades

The Defender Sandbag concept gives you a pair of features that you might have thought could not coexist. What we have here is a proposal for a piece of inundation protection equipment that is simultaneously painless to handle and yet quite robust in the face of a nasty flood.

Yang Zhaonan, Teng Xuan, Zhen Zhiliang and Zhang Mingxi entered their innovative idea into the 2012 Red Dot Award competition, winning them a Design Concept prize for its ingenuity. The flat brick-like sacks are filled with super absorbent recycled paper that soaks up the oncoming water and uses it to its advantage. The Defender Sandbag must be oriented with one particular side to the rushing deluge to increase its success. The wet stuffing becomes quite heavy and the wall of stacked sacks stands as an increasingly sturdy blockade.