Tom Dixon toilet design for VitrA wins Wallpaper* award

Tom Dixon’s toilet designs for Vitra named Finest Fluid Varieties

Tom Dixon was impressed by the Victorian period for his first foray into toilet design, along with his assortment for Turkish specialist VitrA nodding to Nineteenth-century aesthetics. He explains: ‘I like the sensation of permanence in Victorian bogs, with their massive chunky faucets and fats pipes. The aesthetic is intently linked to an entire custom of British engineering, and influenced the event of the toilet.’

‘Liquid’ assortment by Tom Dixon for VitrA

Double washbasin pedestal, from £450; built-in mixers, from £408; illuminated mirror with ceramic body, £850; textured tiles, from £53 per sq m

The ensuing assortment, ‘Liquid’, takes the British designer’s distinctive daring method to a brand new useful degree. Comprising toilet necessities equivalent to sinks, showerheads, faucets, WCs, mirrors and hooks, in addition to furnishings together with stools and cupboards and a collection of textured tiles, the gathering follows VitrA’s custom of artistic collaborations, whereas increasing the model’s attain past simply toilet merchandise.

The gathering is outlined by soft-edged, rounded kinds that nod to the work of Jeff Koons, Claes Oldenburg and Barbara Hepworth, merging delicate geometries and daring, shiny silhouettes. Dixon has injected even essentially the most mundane of home objects (assume bathroom roll holders and urinals) with a powerful design identification and daring aesthetic humour. Every bit was individually conceived, with the entire vary working collectively in an area or individually as standalone items.

Urinal with touch-free flushing mechanism, £797

The designer labored with VitrA’s Innovation Centre to push the manufacturing and inventive boundaries of toilet design. Like Dixon’s different 2021 collections, which concerned mono-material explorations in brass, cork and glass, this one emphasises materiality, this time within the type of ceramics. When discussing ‘Liquid’, he references his fascination with ‘the best way a little bit of gray and greasy earth can rework into one thing so white, clear and glossy’.

Dixon describes ‘Liquid’ as ‘expressive minimalism’, a toilet assortment like no different. Its aesthetic additionally informs performance by way of, for instance, the protection of spherical edges or the benefit of cleansing surfaces. All through the vary, he included small design units that display how ‘Liquid’ is greater than an aesthetic train, such because the magnet attaching the hand-held showerhead to the controls. He says, ‘I needed the gathering to seem like a child’s sketch a WC basin or a faucet, displaying a transparent logic and ease in appears and utilization.’ §