The bathroom is one of the spaces that has evolved dramatically in human history. How has this evolution impacted the way you approach bathroom design in your projects?
The bathroom is a space that is simultaneously underrated, but also incredibly important. It’s a space where if it’s done well, you linger and the experience becomes a ritual. If it’s not done well, it’s a place where you want to leave as quickly as you can, and I know we've all experienced that. It's also a space where we encounter at very critical points in our lives or in our day. It's where you first begin. It's possibly where you end [your day] before going to bed.

It’s also where you are at, in a way, you’re most psychologically vulnerable because you know, you are stripped of all the pretences that make you who you are in the public face; no makeup, no clothes, nothing to hide who you are. So the bathroom is a place where you are who you are in a context where it allows you to rejuvenate yourself to become maybe a better version of yourself, or at least maintain the version that you currently are and not something negative.

The bathroom is also often, in terms of design and floor plan, something that [is] not on show. It’s always behind a closed door, unlike let's say a show kitchen or a living room. It’s often also given the least square footage, given the smallest cramped space and sometimes, even no views or ventilation. So it’s a space that we [designers] struggle with sometimes to make it what it honestly needs to be or should be. I think through these two capsule projects that we did with Cosentino, it was a fun way to explore [these ideas]. Not just what a bathroom can be in the future because I'm not super great at forecasting, but more just thoughts on the bathroom, in terms of its its trajectory as a [primary] space. It is also a new way to relook how we use materials like Silestone or Dekton in a typical bathroom space.

What is your personal definition of a beautiful bathroom?
I think in a way beauty probably, although [it’s] very high on the list for all of us when it comes to bathroom design. I noticed when it comes to bathroom design and kitchen design, it [has become] very glamorised. I also think the reason why Cosentino also has managed to so successfully make waves and bold steps forward in the bathroom arena is because it already has such a strong presence in the kitchen. These two spaces are often very linked.

In the media, they tend to be kind of poetically defined in a way that’s very streamlined, very minimalist, almost as if nothing happens there. You know, in kitchens, where does that ugly sponge go or that detergent bottle or the wet dishes? In the bathroom there are similar issues. If you don't design for the dirty laundry that you have to discard off, the waste or the tons of toilet rolls that you need to keep because you're always running out; if you don't design for those things, then the bathroom’s beauty is really undermined.

In short, beauty is really a combination of extreme function, like precise, almost surgical function that is [to the] millimetre and as precise as that provided for as well as something that does so in not just a purely functional way, where it’s so well designed that you don't even notice the function. It's elevated to a point where you notice the the sort of top layer of beauty. So just like a human being, the surface may be beautiful, but you hope the insides are too [which is why] I think a bathroom needs to be beautiful on both those levels.

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What makes a bathroom great?
I’m sure we all have different takes on it. I think to answer that question, you really have to understand that there are a whole spectrum of different types of experiences that you'll need to have for a complete bathroom experience. Like for instance, if you’re on holiday, your bathroom time suddenly triples and you think nothing of it because that’s part of the enjoyment of ablutions, cleaning yourself, pampering yourself in an environment that's very sensuous. But if you are rushed in the morning and you're late for a meeting, you're not about to, to indulge in the same way. So, I think there is a particular kind of a bathroom for a particular kind of experience.

If you look at, let’s say hospitality design and residential design for experiences like this. I think they're quite different and although one influences the other, we’re not as concerned about certain pragmatic things. In a hospitality-based environment for instance, like maybe the laundry [or] the fact that you have to take out a hair dryer and plug it in every night is not such a big deal. So I think on the one hand, there are certain great hospitality bathroom experiences which are all about the sensational, dramatic beauty of cleaning yourself, enjoying a view, soaking in a tub. But the home situation is quite different. It could be a little bit of that, but it’s primarily doing a lot of heavy lifting to be able to supplement your life and make sure that it’s smooth, easy and friction-free.

In my mind, a really great bathroom needs to essentially chart every single step. For you and me, it’s different every single step of the process by which the user engages with the bathing or ablution ritual and provide for it at every single step of the way.

What has been your personal experience when designing a bathroom for yourself?
When we had the privilege of designing our home recently, we sat down to think about every single step in linear sequence; how the space allows us to basically do everything that we need to do at that particular time without having to double back on the space or wonder where that particular provision was. So there’s a space for to put dirty clothes, air clothes which are maybe wet from the gym, to hang up towels as you bathe, to dry yourself that is not wet, to hang that towel back, and to powder or moisturise yourself without having to sort of do a strange balancing act.

Everything is catered for, and to my dear wife and partner’s horror. She would rather just leave everything out if I am traveling and says it’s the happiest few moments of her life, since she can leave all her moisturisers and skincare all about. But then when I’m around, it's always behind a closed door, but it’s just with a difference of 30cm. So I think it's not that bad, but, she would say otherwise.

Everything is catered to every single step of the process and I think that’s different for everyone. If you’re designing something generic, then maybe you’ll have to just take some kind of like baseline average. But still a lot of our bathrooms in condominiums and private houses, I don’t think cater to the needs of the users in a specific way. They’ll have to buy something to supplement or sort of jerry-rig something to work around because I think we prize the superficial beauty first, before we get to the sort of underlying beauty of something just functioning so seamlessly.

You created two concepts for Cosentino’s Bathelier, The Collage, and The Cave. Let’s start with The Cave. How did this concept come about?
The design is really quite subjective, whether you like it or not, but the story behind it was far more interesting. The team and myself had a decision to make: Do we [create] something that's universally beautiful, which would satisfy a very wide audience and be instantly likeable or trendy? Or, do we [create] something that maybe is a bit of a provocation? Given the fact that we were amongst many fellow designers who [we] had the privilege of working together [on this C-bath project] who have designed spaces which are breathtaking. I would gladly spend time in any of their bathrooms.

But I think as a personal exercise, I wanted to push the thought process a little bit more. The Cave addresses the notion of the archetypal bath scenario, if you want to put it that way. I tried to imagine a space where before bathrooms existed, how did our [ancestors] still in an enclosure of sorts that maybe they didn't design, but found to use. How would they have gone about their cleaning rituals or their bathing rituals? The whole notion or the imagination behind it was maybe there was something like a cave that they would have found that provided them some helping closure protection from hostiles back then, wild predators, or preying eyes. It would also be able to have natural light.

So the opening of a cave looking out into potentially really wild, lush, and untouched [natural] view. So we said to ourselves, what if we were to start from that point and then translate that into a contemporary version. So that was where The Cave was born. The slew of materials was so wide, it was easy to find things that had a lot of texture and things that perhaps would be found in different caves around the world. So we took that and then created these sort of prismatic forms and wrapped them in this sort of cave like shape. Culminating the experience would be this glass pane where you would have an uninterrupted view of the surroundings while you shower. Clearly in here, there were not the notions of the inner beauty. It’s more like the external beauty experiencing it at a very sort of dramatic phenomenal sort of way.

Could you share more about the materials and details that was selected specifically for The Cave?
You notice that it as it sort of marches towards the opening, the materials also get a bit lighter because we are conscious that in a cave, typically, there’s this very bright contrast where the darker interiors of the cave provide too strong a contrast of the glaring exterior and a bit harsh in your eyes. So it gets a bit lighter as you go towards the opening of the cave.

We also centralised everything and not hang anything off a wall to sort of draw attention to the sink as well as to the shower area which uses shower trays, which we love because we often struggle to find the right kind of tile with the slip resistance that we need. [Shower trays] tend to be so reliant on good craftsmanship to inlay that well, so many joints, glass lines and often in reality turns out to be less beautiful than you imagine. But here with things like, the bath trays or the sink, it’s all perfect already from the factory and it's so easy to implement and use. So that's something that we really tried to exploit.

We [also] designed the lighting integrated into the back of the panel. This scene, I think is really best appreciated at night or at dusk. In fact when we were doing the design sketches, we [initially] picked a scene outside that was sunset-like almost kind of blood red or orange, which we felt captured the sort of spirit of the cave a bit better than it was a bright scene like this. It would [have] been moodier and more dramatic, a bit more cave-like. So you can imagine as the day becomes evening, it could really change the space.

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Let's move on to the next concept, The Collage. Can you tell us more about it?
Well, I think The Collage was in response to our own process. I think quite commonly use of materials like Dekton and Silestone where you pick one colour that you like and went with your overall design, you would wrap it almost everywhere be it a lighter or darker colour. Maybe you would accent one highlight piece. For us in the office, it’s the F word—the feature wall. It’s almost by default, when we don't have money for a lot of fancy materials; we’ll have one feature wall, then you would have 10 per cent of something more impactful and everything else would be sort of kind of like a beautiful balanced wrap that was homogenous. We do that for several reasons, it’s easier to implement and if you buy these materials by the sheet, there’s not a lot of wastage because you don’t use multiple types of sheets, you just use two maybe. But we said, what if we saw the implementation of these materials in a different way? What if we saw them as a collage?

We don’t often see the way we [design a] space as collage-making, we see them as layering. Maybe an [architectural] shell with objects inside. But if it’s a collage, then suddenly the layers are no longer hierarchical. There isn’t a backdrop to a foreground. Instead, there is overlaying of different, equally important layers. So what we did was, we used four sheets or five sheets of each of the different material and minimised wastage by cutting it a certain way to maximise the sheet without very much wastage at all. But you would splice them one over another in a new way to provoke thought of how can we use these materials. That tends to usually go by the larger the sheet, the more expensive, right? The very large format tiles and large format sheets cost more. So in this case, it was being a bit subversive and also in doing so, we tried to make these collages spatial in nature

For instance, you’ll see the shower tray and the wall in front of it wrapped and if you sort of pulled back a little bit more, you’ll see it wraps above you. Even the window modules and sink modules sort of interweaves and pass each other by to create a sense of layering, just like how a collage would be layered that way. We had a lot of fun doing this and instead of just creating the typical functions of a bathroom, we also wanted to bring the views from the outside through the slit windows and planters. So, the tropical environment sort of invaded the inside space.

Could you share more about the materials and details that was selected specifically for this look?
I think the beautiful thing about a material of this nature is that you just no longer worry about its wear and tear. Likewise its usability, as the material is slip-free and stain-resistant. There’s this kind of liberty, freedom and flexibility to then just like focus on colours, textures and materials that you like.

We had several rounds to pick a whole bunch of things that we initially like. They were kind of like monochromatic in nature as we wanted to keep it within a certain palette. Then, there was some feedback from Cosentino that certain materials that we picked were not appropriate for one reason or the other. So there was a sort of constant evolution, but the whole notion of The Collage is sort of free for all. I mean the material itself is not super important, it's the fact that you can pick so many different ones and you can put them together in an interesting way.

The size of each of large strips which formed the collage are fairly wide, but you could go thinner or bigger. So it really is [customisable], it could be quite interesting. Just a sort of slightly more lateral way of thinking about how to implement these materials.

What are some of the new innovations in bathroom design that you are most excited about and why?
Everyone obviously is well aware of like the new Vision Pro and the blending of AR [augmented reality] or VR [virtual reality]. I was thinking about that a bit and found it a bit hard in the bathroom, because you probably would need your face available or your head available because of the rituals involved, that are not like in a living room or kitchen.

I do wonder what the potential overlap, without it being like an over-inundation of your senses in a bathroom, to have not just your physical world and the realm of what you can touch, see, feel or smell as your only experiential layer. But if there could be also the layering of digital formats that could then potentially open up your space to scenes that are projected or digitised interactions.

For instance, once we bring our phones with us anywhere and everywhere becomes an office or a studio or a means of interaction with somebody else. Wherever our phones are, that’s where our connection to the rest of the world is. So I’m quite certain that the phone in its current sort of rather small format has room to sort of enlarge its presence, but not altering the way you interact with it terribly differently. But enlarges its presence in the bathroom space. I think that's one potential.

In terms of other sort of groundbreaking technologies, I think our profession in built environment evolves at a frightfully slow rate. Compared to, let’s say, the automotive industry or the tech industry or even the fashion industry, which, you know, tends to sort of renew itself much faster. There are reasons for it, the cost of renewal as well as the way we use space, the way we see the world and what we need hasn’t really evolved that much. We still need a chair, for instance, to give us this kind of ergonomic support. We still need the things around us to support our bodies because our bodies haven’t changed. Therefore, the things around us haven’t changed that much either, at least in the physical realm.

I don’t see it as being vastly different but these sort of steps towards incremental change and also the overlap between the physical, digital or virtual realms is probably the most interesting arena.

What is your takeaway from this design exercise?
A huge takeaway that was actually quite enjoyable, though it was not necessarily related to the design process, although that in itself was enjoyable. But it was trying to recall meaningful bathrooms or rituals that I've enjoyed over the year. As I’ve been a designer, but more importantly, as a younger adult, and even as a child because I think those things shape the way we see design.

I remember so many incredible moments as a child in the bathroom. I didn’t have a fancy home, we lived in a very humble home. In fact, we lived in, strangely enough, church premise since my mother was a principal in a church kindergarten. It was a very generic bathroom. But one thing it did have was it had a shower tray that was very deep, it was like almost 150cm deep for some reason, with glass surrounding it. So you could sort of fill it up like a little, you know, a little shallow wading pool and as a child, I used to fill it up and play in it for hours with my Lego, boats, and all that. That got me thinking that it’s so interesting because the bathroom for me was not just a unique functional space. It was not just a space to get clean, but it was a space to be entertained as well. The whole notion of being entertained whilst you do something is a very interesting notion for us [designers] to think about in the bathroom, especially for ones where it's hospitality related and you can spend more time in there or even at home when you have a weekend to just luxuriate a little bit.

Process wise, we were incredibly provocative with these materials. It also reinforced the notion of how important the inner beauty is and addressing how function is very much a part of the bathroom experience. 

What would you like to see in bathrooms of the future?
The bathtub is like a real strange thing to me because it’s something that takes up so much real estate. In proportion to its size, the amount of time that you actually get to spend inside or use it is so inversely proportionate. I can imagine if there was some form of like a collapsible or expendable thing that became a bathtub, it would be so much better than a bathtub itself.

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