Zaha Hadid’s legacy has been left in the best hands ever. The renowned anglo-Iraqi architect, who passed away last March, knew how to surrounded herself with an outstanding team of professionals, some of whom are right out of the top drawer, and furthermore, they have been able to continue her work, namely her complete architecture reinvention. A big team, who at present and despite being without its leader, has taken its mentor’s baton and has managed to carry on challenging design laws in the only way they know how to. And it is VITAE that is the result of all this.
It is worth having a look at the innovative bathroom collection in order to realise just how much Zaha Hadid exudes essence, but without leaving the studio’s big work apart, playing their part and contributing to the early concept regarding the bathroom of the future.
It has been an honour for PORCELANOSA Grupo, by means of its bathroom equipment firm, Noken, which worked together with Zaha Hadid and her team, a part of which we had the pleasure of interviewing after the presentation of Vitae in London. We met Maha Kutay, Christos Passas and Mouzhan Majidi, three of the most important members of Zaha Hadid Design, who together told us what design meant for them and how they conceived the most natural of Vitae’s essence, a work of art for contemporary bathroom design. What follows is what we were told…
Discovering... Maha Kutay
-The main values that Zaha Hadid Design wanted to implement in this collection are elegance, flow and (mostly) functionality.
-My favourite piece would be the shelf that bridges between two pieces, the toilet and the bidet. It somehow brings in a new idea to the bathroom environment, creating one piece out of two. Somehow, jellying them together.
-For Zaha Hadid Design, working with Porcelanosa has been quite educational on the production front. It helped Zaha Hadid push the boundaries with fabrication and at the same time helped Porcelanosa keep up with our designs and the making of these.
Discovering... Christos Passas
-I think that Vitae collection is an important piece of design, as a collection, because it really unifies all the bathroom experience as in to one coherent goal.
-The Vitae collection is a family of objects, and as such is designed as a single style, but also each object maintains its exclusive functionality, but the form is complementary from one object to the next.
-I think the Vitae design holds the essence of the Zaha Hadid style and legacy.
-It's been an interesting experience, for many reasons., but because you start with a very simple idea, you want to enhance the experience of washing, of hygiene, but you end up getting into more and more complexities and technicalities, and you start from a very big object, but, actually, you start thinking about every last millimetre of the design of these objects.
-The most challenging part of the Vitae collection was to actually create a consistent design repertoire that will be able to bring all these different elements together.
-Inspiration can be found everywhere. I believe architects can find inspiration in nature: in the sea, in the forest, in the way we see and experience water flowing through our hands. I think these are fundamental human experiences and we try to recreate those.
-My favourite piece in the collection is the mirror assembly with the basins and the mirrors together.
-I think architects have a fundamental role in our society today, to relook at the whole of the material world, and try to produce new designs that are up to date with our needs and our desires of today.
-To maintain simplicity in the approach, and try to translate that in the way the everyday person uses these objects as part of their everyday life.
Discovering... Mouzhan Majidi
-Inspiration is all around us, is what we see everyday, it's in nature, it's the way that people use the buildings. So, for us, inspiration is the start of a project, it's the way we evaluate the project, the way people use the buildings, and the way everything comes together.
-Bathrooms are very private spaces, so the idea of luxury, the idea of cleanness, clean lines, I think it's what's important in a bathroom design.
-For us, when we design interiors, we're already designing three or four years in advance, because what we design now gets realized two or three years from now. So, as architects, as designers, we always have to be three or four years ahead of our time. The ingredients of what we use now is something that will be seen in three years.
-Well, I like all of it, to be honest. In particular, the sink. I think the way the sink and the way that the shelves come together, and nestle into each other... I really like that piece. But, for me, it's a whole set, I can't really separate one from another; it's the whole thing that comes together.
-I think it's a new look. The reason is that it's very fresh, there isn’t another one like that out there so I think it's going to be very successful.
-Working with Porcelanosa it's been a great collaboration for us. The team have worked fantastically well together. You need that, in order to produce the fantastic products that we see out there.
-I think it does, absolutely. I think it's been true to the DNA of our design, and I think it's great, you see it right away, the Zaha lines right away.
