Water Dreams

In the big watery scheme of things,” I wrote years ago in The Art of Doing Nothing, “your plumbing is as much part of nature as is dew on a spiderweb or a storm gathering over Miami.” Today this perspective doesn’t sound as improbable as it used to. We’re all aware that the water filling our bathtubs is as precious as that in the Colorado, Missouri, or Rio Grande. When we turn on the faucet, its bubbling sound is a reminder that what passes through our pipes is a continuous stream that flows in a never-ending cycle of reinvention.

Reinvention is also what drove a trio of European designers to dream up new ways to celebrate the trans-formative qualities of water in the domestic realm. In recent years, Jean-Marie Massaud, the Bouroullec brothers, and Patricia Urquiola have been hired by Axor to challenge old assumptions and create bathroom fixtures that reconnect emotionally with the 330 million cubic miles of water that circulate on or near the surface of the earth.

The quest began in 2002 with the first so-called AquaTektur workshop, an international get-together organized by Axor’s young brand manager, Philippe Grohe, who assembled a group of designers and architects from all over the world and asked them to explore ways to transform the bathroom into a space for being closer to nature and more mindful of its gifts.

Though Hansgrohe had always focused on faucets and showerheads, Axor, its upscale division, was ready for a rebirth. The WaterDream project, presented in 2005 at the Milan furniture fair, was a first step, showcasing conceptual designs by Massaud, Urquiola, and the Bouroullecs. The installations made clear that Axor was considering the possibility of designing entire bathrooms, sinks, tubs, and accessories. The WaterDream creative process would prove laborious, involving as many bends and meanders as a river negotiating a floodplain. “I hadn’t given my designers a precise brief,” Grohe says. “I’d eliminated marketing considerations. I was curious to find out what these talented thinkers would do if limitations and constraints didn’t exist.”

Lacking obstacles, a fluid will invariably follow a slow serpentine pattern. It took up to six years for some of the bathroom concepts to evolve out of their WaterDream phase and mature into practical collections. But just as floodplains generate rich ecosystems, so did the WaterDream projects. “It’s a miracle all three teams were able to produce actual working bathroom systems,” Grohe says.

On its way back to the sea, where does water stop? Where is it collected? Diverted? Dispersed? Flushed? For Massaud, a master of fluid design (and a scuba diver in his spare time), the bathroom is just one of many stopovers water makes on its journey downhill. “A great bathroom is not about great plumbing,” he says. “Philippe didn’t ask me how to redesign existing products but what to do with water.” The French designer envisioned a series of water cascades filling your sink and tub. His taps dispense a sheer ribbon of bouncing water as mesmerizing as a translucent rainbow. To achieve this result, he worked with a team of Axor technicians for months. The water pressure inside is carefully controlled to deliver a seamless output. Eventually, after a number of trials, a perfect waterfall of liquid mist sprang as if from some invisible ledge. “One can’t help but respect a waterfall,” Grohe says. “When we can tap into a universal human experience such as this one,
the faucet becomes more than a piece of metal. It is transformed into a wellspring of emotions.”

As it happens, Hansgrohe is headquartered in Schiltach, a picturesque Black Forest village that is less than 20 miles from the Triberg waterfalls, among the tallest in Germany. A succession of short cascades that drop vertically for more than half a mile, the falls are a natural wonder. The Axor office is on the bank of the pristine River Kinzig, one of the tributaries of the Rhine. It is also a short ride from the source of the Breg, on the other side of the European continental divide, where the Danube originates. Straddling the watershed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Black Sea, Schiltach has managed to remain an unspoiled sanctuary. “The Kinzig flows right under my window,” says Grohe, scion of the Hansgrohe bathroom fixture empire. “Every day, when I look at this immaculate river, I’m reminded of how precious clean water is. Conserving it, for me, is not a marketing strategy. It’s a philosophy.”

A true romantic, Grohe believes that the beauty of an object is as much part of the service it renders as its function. “Our products, because of the way they’re designed, enhance people’s emotional relationship with water and encourage them to use it more respectfully,” he insists. “We believe that beauty has a role to play in our quest for green living.”

The first Massaud waterfall collection came out in 2007. Today he is revisiting his original vision for a new line to be introduced in 2012. The triangular vat he designed to replace the traditional bathtub no longer satisfies him. The freestanding tub filler suddenly looks too fussy to him. He questions why we stand instead of sit in front of the sink. Though he doesn’t want to give anything away, it’s clear that his new concept will evoke natural forms: water rippling on the surface of a lake, splashing into a fountain, or running into rivulets after a rainstorm.