Editor's Letter – June 2022

Water seems to have been a consistent theme over the past few weeks. Firstly in the form of a super-hot Milan Design Week. Both metaphorically and literally.

As early-June temperatures soared in the capital of design and things took a turn for the perspirational, our inaugural DAAily bar at Swiss Corner in Brera became the destination for thousands of A&D lovers looking for both liquid refreshment and refreshment for the mind. Beyond the thousand-plus guests who attended our party to help celebrate the union of Designboom, Architonic and ArchDaily, I’d personally like to thank everyone who pitched up to our Live Talks with some of the world’s leading creative practitioners and opinion-formers. Without you, it wouldn’t have been a dialogue.

Missed our speakers? Fear not. You can catch up now by watching our insight-packed talks with Patricia Urquiola, Sebastian Herkner and Stefan Diez on video, with more recordings to follow shortly. And don’t forget to check out Swiss artist Douglas Mandry in conversation with Designboom Editor-in-Chief Birgit Lohmann, discussing his beautiful and provocative collaboration with Bally – a unique architectural curtain, produced by Fischbacher 1819, designed specifically for our Milan space.

Mandry’s image-making focuses on melting glacial ice. Water was top of the editorial agenda during our recent Global Design Agenda Bathroom Design Week too, where architectural grandee Matteo Thun and celebrated designer Marc Sadler, along with Greek-Swedish office OOAK architects and Hangzhou-based PIG Design, mused on the tension between bathroom design, planning and sustainability. For Sadler, ‘the bathroom as a machine became emotional’: the challenge is to deliver products and design spaces that meet our growing need for an almost spiritual self-care as well as literal cleansing.

Water temples, meanwhile, are for Thun somewhat of a fantasy, as he reminds us of the limited floor space we’re dealing with in most bathroom projects. The Milan-based architect sees a greater use of touchless technology, concealed behind natural materials (but not tiles!) as the way forward for a user experience that scores highly on both intuition and hygiene.

And speaking of floor space, why not take a look at these recently completed hotel projects, where the bathtub has slipped the surly bonds of the enclosed, windowless bathroom to create a more continuous plan. What do you think? A natural progression of our pursuit for heightened sensory experience? Or privacy-disrupting folly?

Stay clean. And be inspired.

Simon Keane-Cowell
Editor-in-Chief


PS: Let’s not allow ‘Ukraine fatigue’ to set in. The conflict is still ongoing, impacting the lives of millions. If you would like to donate to the humanitarian effort, here are some aid organisations you might want to consider…

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