At this year’s ISH, burgbad presented the Saguaro design study, the result of a collaboration with Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
The experimental bathroom design Saguaro was created by design students Vitalij Krist and Florian Wagner. Both the appearance and construction was inspired by the cactus it’s named after: the slightly surreal-looking design features a central pedestal, which is positioned on a shower tray; several metal pipes sprout up from it like the vertical arms of the saguaro.
This unconventional appearance reinforces the impression of a sculpture. The concrete surface of the shower tray and pedestal contrast with individual segments and fittings made of blackened stainless steel, some of which use decorative gold-coloured elements for accentuation.
Saguaro was developed as part of “burgbad lab”, a series of workshops that the globally active bathroom furniture manufacturer initiated in 2017. The series of workshops is dedicated to promising topics like sustainable and universal design and, in collaboration with universities and colleges, invites students to develop designs that take these topics into account. The Schmallenberg-based company has also created the “burgbad campus” platform specially to present the results of the burgbad lab and give students the opportunity to show their designs to a larger audience of trade professionals at relevant trade fairs like the ISH.
In the two designers’ vision, their concept with forms based on simple geometric solids replaces an entire (bath-) room. The underlying idea is to detach the bathroom from the wall and design it independently of the architecture. In order to achieve that, the two design students from Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts centered all the drain and supply lines at a single point to create three usage areas: the washbasin, the toilet and the shower, which are positioned in a circular arrangement at an angle of 120 degrees to one another.
In its totality, the Saguaro concept also imitates the cactus’s ability to save water by using vacuum drain technology, which saves more water and waste water than conventional processes.
As an innovation-driven company and “hidden champion”, burgbad looks for new, promising concepts that reconcile sustainability and densification with customers’ desire for a personalised living environment and generation-spanning convenience. As the first German bathroom furniture manufacturer to be awarded the “Climate-Neutral Furniture Manufacturer” label by the German Quality Assurance Association for Furniture (DGM), burgbad has already achieved carbon-neutral production; its next goal is the carbon-neutral product. Universal design and sustainability are therefore the leading themes for the burgbad lab, a project in which the company actively seeks to swap ideas with the upcoming generation of designers.
We’d love to know your opinion on these innovative and incredibly interesting designs. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
