Cooper Hewitt says...
UNYQ is a prosthetics and orthotics company based in San Francisco, California and Seville, Spain. Launched publicly in 2014, the company’s goal is to help amputees and scoliosis patients reclaim their mobility and erase the stigma around prosthetics and external body braces. Co-founder and CEO Eythor Bender served as president of Össur America, which introduced the world’s first bionic prosthetics and sponsored teams of athletes who utilized the innovative Flex-Foot Cheetah prosthesis (also in the Cooper Hewitt collection); Bender was also Executive Director of Esko Bionics and Rex Bionics, creators of the first specialized bionic body suits. Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Manuel Boza, a robotics engineer and above-the-knee amputee himself, was inspired by his own dissatisfaction with commercially available prosthetic covers and sought to find a better alternative to the silicone and PVC finishes widely offered to earlier generations of amputees. The company’s completely customizable designs transform “stigma to style,” empowering users to reclaim movement and use of their limbs as well as their identities through bespoke, technologically-driven prosthetics and back braces. The firm’s integration of technology into its products goes beyond mere styling: its Align scoliosis brace utilizes Intel’s Curie module, a tiny computer chip that allows the 3D-printed back brace to interface with a smartphone app to inform a comprehensive collaboration between doctor, patient, and medical device.
