Water Dreams

In old Europe, master bathrooms are often the extension of bedrooms, separated from the conjugal bed by only a folding screen. Hygienic practices are not incompatible with congeniality. For Urquiola, a product designer and architect who now lives in Italy, what flows in bathroom pipes is the stuff of kinship and romance. In her native Spain, she says, bathrooms are where family members share secrets, laugh, gossip—and shampoo.

When Grohe asked her to design a line for Axor, he had no idea she was going to approach water as a metaphor for the currents of empathy that circulate among loved ones. The bathroom—which he had considered a private sanctuary (something most men still believe)—was recast by Urquiola as a shared fantasy, a stage where people express their feelings about living together.

Looking like large cheery patios, her bathrooms incorporate elements from her childhood memories, with visual references to Renoir, Degas, Manet, and Cassatt. They evoke a time when water didn’t come out of a tap but had to be fetched—a time when you used less water because you had to carry it. Urquiola’s modestly proportioned sinks are shaped like old-fashioned laundry baskets, complete with handles that double as towel racks. Her tubs, as deep, narrow, and curvy as sleigh beds, are as comfortable as old slippers. As if to channel all these impressionistic currents of emotions, her chrome faucets are sturdy fixtures that look hefty at first glance but turn out to be surprisingly ergonomic, with handles and rings that guide the hand and please the fingers.

“I had fun creating a decor that expresses the personality of different people,” she says, explaining the charming jumble of furniture, plants, and accessories crowding her model bathroom. “I showed two small bathtubs side by side to exemplify what I feel is the ultimate luxury: togetherness and individuality.”

The Urquiola collection was recently introduced in the United States, but she is already talking about her next Axor assignment. She’d like to develop a line of bathtubs for what she calls “public baths”: spa facilities in hotels, gyms, municipal pools, and health clubs. “The home tub is fast becoming an anachronism,” she explains. “People don’t have time to soak anymore, and when they do, filling a tub with all that water feels wasteful.” She foresees a future in which taking a bath would be something one does in fancy venues not unlike the old Roman baths.

Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec developed their concept with the same technique that the Colorado River used to carve the Grand Canyon. It took five years for them to wear down the obstacles they had encountered after presenting their initial WaterDream idea in Milan. Their desire to reduce to a minimum the amount of material necessary to build a bathroom turned out to be unrealistic. “We were much too rigid in our orig-inal approach,” Erwan now says. Philippe Grohe agrees: “We went back and forth over solutions so many times, it was daunting, even to me. Twice during the process we almost quit.”

Introduced last month in Europe, and available in the States next year, the Bouroullec concept is worth the wait. Minimalist indeed, it turns
the bathroom into a serene landscape of shallow terraces stacked two or three at a time to create a fluid succession of shelves. Clustered around unobtrusive, low-profile sinks and tubs, these ledges provide natural niches for soaps, towels, bottles, and brushes. Faucets, handles, and knobs are simple chrome rods that gleam softly against the gently eroded formations surrounding them.

“The design came from understanding the gestures one does when water is involved,” explains Erwan, “and when you have to move things around with wet, slippery hands.” The vulnerability experienced when standing in the buff in front of a mirror is offset by the sensuality of the materials and their own naked appearance. One feels less exposed in environments where sharp angles have been worn down, as if by centuries of exposure to the relentless swirl of whirlpools and eddies.

Abnoba was a Celtic goddess, revered in the Black Forest three thousand years ago as the protector of rivers and lakes. She was venerated along streams but particularly at their sources, in spots where the water surfaced and formed a reflective pool. Her name was engraved on altars in public baths in antiquity. Two such markings have been found in archaeological sites near the Axor headquarters, in Mühlenbach and Badenweiler, small bucolic resort towns known in the distant past for the healing qualities of their water. Abnoba was there, wherever people needed to be reminded that clean water is a gift that must be cherished and protected.

Philippe Grohe is more concerned with future generations than past ones, yet his philosophy is in line with the Celts, the Black Forest’s early settlers. His Axor faucets are more than elegant spigots. They’re an expression of the principle behind the cult of water, as practiced by our Iron Age forefathers. “I am convinced that the bathroom can be a little temple where we worship nature,” he says.