Singularity washbasin and shelving system
The Hungarian bathroom studio, Caracalla Studio invited the sanitary ware company Laufen CZ to a design competition announced in 2015, and the topic was the design of a washbasin and storage furniture connected to it, which raises the bathroom’s status to be equal with the main rooms (living room, bedroom).
There is an increasingly popular trend in interior design, according to which the space is organized around a separate element highlighted as an island (e.g. kitchen island, bathtub). The basic assumption of my concept was that the washbasin could be the next step in this trend, as its use is much more frequent than a bathtub or shower, and this way more people can access it at the same time. So my goal was to create a free-standing, almost sculptural object. The design is about the black holes in the universe and the space-time plane they break through: these tiny formations, because of their immeasurable mass and density, create an infinitely deep, funnel-forming gravitational well in the field with a theoretical endpoint of singularity. In order to implement the design as effectively as possible, I used Laufen’s newly developed SaphirKeramik ceramics, which can achieve unprecedented thinness in terms of wall thickness, while the strength properties of the structure do not change or even improve.
The main focus of the object is on the washbasin, which is why, in addition to the sanitary drain pipe, I designed the support frame as simple as possible: powder-coated steel closed sections with a small rim at the top, which emphasizes the thinness of the washbasin and gives you the impression of floating.
This framed structure provided the basis for the shelving system for the washbasin, which I rather endowed with only a supporting role due to the strong character of the bathroom sink. The basic material and treatment of the frame is similar to that of the washbasin, but the shelves, unlike the traditions, were designed to be made of SaphirKeramik porcelain. For stability, there are stainless steel bars in the frame that connect the four vertical columns, on which the shelves can be placed. For the sake of variability, a box with a door can be freely installed between any two shelves. The doors can be opened with push openers in order to preserve the clearest possible design.
My entry eventually won the approval of a professional jury, and the prototype made by the Swiss-based company was first shown to the public at the 2016 Caracalla Design Days.
2015
