Hurricane dame

In Beirut to celebrate the Middle East launch of one of her latest creations, Patricia Urquiola spoke to Selina Denman about practical products – and why having a design style is just plain ‘stupid’.

The Italians have fondly nicknamed her ‘the hurricane’ because of the force with which she careered onto the design scene, and when she talks – forcefully, fervently, swerving from topic to topic, barely stopping for breath as she flits from Spanish to English to French and back again – the moniker seems fitting.

Patricia Urquiola is one of the few women to have made a name for themselves in the male-dominated world of product design. Born in Oviedo in Spain, Urquiola attended Madrid Polytechnic’s faculty of architecture, graduating in 1989 after completing a thesis with Achille Castiglioni.

But in built-up city like Milan, there was far more scope for designing products than buildings, and Urquiola went on to work with leading companies such as Alessi, B&B Italia, Flos, Kartell, Molteni&C, Moroso, Paola Lenti, Rosenthal, Kettal and Foscarini.

One of her more recent collaborations was with Axor, the high-end ‘designer’ arm of German sanitaryware company, Hansgrohe. The fruit of this partnership is the Axor Urquiola collection, which includes bath mixers, wash basins, a bath tub, accessories and a partition.

The new bathroom is infused with intimacy and human intuition, a self-proclaimed “space for normal life”. Boundaries between the bedroom and bathroom have been completely broken down and the space is divided by a single, multi-functional partition that can act as a divider, heater and mirror.

Taps are asymmetrical, sensual and sleek. Two sinks are set on opposite sides of the room – because who wants to watch their partner brushing their teeth? Sinks are reminiscent of a bucket, to encourage people to think about how much water they are using; two baths are set side by side, each designed for one person – after all, why waste the water if you normally bathe alone?

Perhaps unusually for a designer producing at the top end of the scale, Urquiola has created a collection of products that can be slotted into any environment. “The things you put in your house will live with other layers. There will always be other layers that existed before,” she commented.

In Beirut to celebrate the official Middle East launch of the Axor Urquiola collection, Patricia Urquiola spoke exclusively to CID about the meaning of luxury, and her lack of goals.

What are the defining characteristics of the new Axor Urquiola bathroom?

I think the collection is quite unisex – I don’t think it looks particularly feminine. When I was speaking with Philippe Grohe of Axor, the first thing we thought about was intimacy. This is the place where you take care of yourself and you take care of your relationship with someone else. This is not just a space where you wash or use the shower.

It was important to insert my pieces into some kind of context. So we decided to create a scenario of a possible couple and see what would happen. Everything came from that. In our scenario, there were no boundaries between the bathroom and the bedroom. There was just the paravant. That was the only divider, so when you are in the bedroom you do not see everything but you can see certain things, if you want.

The bathroom is a place where you reflect. This is a time when you are naked and you are not naked often, so there is that personal intimacy too.

You seem to have quite an interesting perception of what luxury is?

A client might say: “I want a double wash basin and a very big bathtub”. I say that the bathtub doesn’t really need to fit more than one person. I do not think that is the way for us to grow as individuals. There is no need to have swimming pools in our bathrooms. The whole big bath tub filled with bubbles is a little bit ‘Pretty Woman’ anyway; it’s a little old-fashioned for me.

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