A designer brand creates bathroom history

How Axor and Philippe Starck have been working together for 20 years to bring change to the bathroom

Why has design become so important in our lives? And why has design assumed a key role, especially in the development of the sanitary industry, over the last few decades? Philippe Starck, one of the leading designers of our time, employs design in his mission to bring more beauty to our lives, to make our lives better. For this reason, one of his goals has been to develop hotel design around the globe into a kind of ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, an all-embracing work of art. His work shows what design is able to achieve if it is used as a means to break down traditional, customary patterns and norms. In the modern bathrooms of today we can at last see what for so long has been concealed behind the ancient veneer of standard mirror tiles and stereotypical ceramics: it is still a highly functional space where high-quality materials, color and sensual haptics combine with beautiful shapes. That this space lets us experience water in its many and varied forms and allows us to spend time by ourselves makes it a precious retreat in an ever more fast-moving world for many of us.