Ross Lovegrove designs Freedom bathroom range for VitrA

Freedom bathroom range by Ross Lovegrove for VitrA

Designer Ross Lovegrove has created a new collection for Turkish bathroom manufacturers VitrA, called Freedom.

The collection of asymmetrical, sculptural forms includes a toilet, free-standing and wall-mounted basins, and a bidet.

Here's further information from Ross Lovegrove:

As the name suggests, my new collection for Vitra opens up another blue sky approach to form, technology and the culture of sensual bathing in contemporary life.

The pieces are born out a five year relationship with the company, its belief in me, and my ambition to remain curious and vital in the discovery of new potential in industrial ceramics and associated objects.

So the love affair continues… centered around the ebb and flow of this incredible material, introducing notions of movement, asymmetry and body language.

It explores how the relationship between shadow and space can divert our minds into a world of ethereal organic flow… the psychology of moving through spaces and engaging objects which deliver and contain water… the base element of life along with air.

I have wished to conclude this next chapter with works that are more akin to art in the sculptural investment made and which create freedom for the user in a very pure and natural way… breaking free from the office-like orientation and rather dull formalities of typical bathroom layouts.

We must respect the way spaces are established and the rules of fitting and installation, so within this I have chosen to shift and sculpt to allow bodies to engage differently and indeed more informally… this implies gentleness and a very intimate relationship between humans, water, form and materials.

A breakthrough is the bidet, which should be derived from a basin not a WC…this has been fundamentally wrong since the inception of the bidet many years ago.

The tap is now an electronic-like Branussis bird: floating, having its own character, but beautifully interactive in the way it gently delivers water in an economic and reflexive way.

Freedom is a very new design concept for bathroom culture. It could only be achieved by harnessing the advanced skills of the VitrA engineers and development teams and building on the knowledge gained from the Istanbul and MOD collections. It is the next step on the VitrA / Lovegrove path to placing bathroom culture at the very center of home investment as a measure of our culture and humanity.

The collection, therefore, represents possibly the most innovative design language on the market today, pushing boundaries to provide luxury of sensual form enhanced by an astonishing level of surface finish and technical innovation.

Freedom, as the name suggests, breaks free from the formality of symmetry of existing bathroom solutions, a symmetry that if organized intelligently can be elegant and calming, or alternatively exude the cold formality sometimes associated with such unnaturally ordered work environments.

But the bathroom is not a work environment… it is an oasis of sanctuary... a retreat from the chaos of daily life.

Freedom provides asymmetry and movement to enrich space and create a smooth liquidity relating to physical and physiological comfort. It raises awareness and consciousness of being and massages the eyes to massage the mind and then ultimately our spirit to feel free in our private space.

The feeling of well being is enhanced through sensual biomorphic forms and the sense that one has entered a world of high art , the artist’s studio where materials and technology fuse to become functional and accessible art works... a new serene organic language for the 21st century.