Resting a broom on its bristles can cause them to splay outwards and become permanently deformed so graduate designer Joseph Guerra has made one with a pivoting head.

The flexible head snaps into place with a magnet, allows access into difficult corners and can also be detached for use with a dust-pan.

Guerra linked the repetitive action of sweeping with the meditative process of raking sand in a Japanese Zen garden, hoping that his broom might allow for a similar moment of contemplation.

The broom was part of Guerra's recently completed senior thesis at Rhode Island School of Design.

Earlier this year we featured another of Guerra's designs – a flashlight encased in CNC-cut cork.

Here's more from Joseph Guerra:

I made the connection between sweeping your floor to raking the sand in a traditional Japanese Zen Garden. In these gardens it is not about the sand, it is about the act of raking and what one contemplates during this repetitive action. The broom works like this too, as a tool it interacts with the user on an emotional and utilitarian level.

My goal was to make a better broom, even if only a small contribution considering that the broom is such a highly evolved object. I focused on the idiosyncrasies that make sweeping cumbersome and often counter-intuitive. From here I made a broom that is both a hand-duster and a broom, the pivoting head allows it to access all corners, it stands upright on its own, it folds vertical for easy storage with a magnet that allows it to snap shut, the bristles will never get damaged while not in use since the broom will not be resting on the bristles.