Living Bathroom™: designs to break boundaries

Falper has built a reputation for sanitary ware that is a cut above our conventional bathroom staples. The sort of qualities we readily attribute to fine Italian furniture design – exquisite materials handcrafted with age-old expertise – are also to be found in the basins and baths, taps and towel rails that Falper presents. So much so, in fact, that when Foster + Partners wanted to realise a collection of bathroom fittings it had conceived as minimalist sculptures – perfectly aligned with the fine material palette and faultless finish of precious furniture pieces – they sought out Falper as partners. 

The collaboration has resulted in a distinctive bathroom collection named MA, after a Japanese term meaning ‘the spaces in between’. ‘MA deconstructs the bathroom into its constituent parts,’ explains Mike Holland, head of industrial design at Foster + Partners. ‘Storage, sinks, baths, mirror and rails are all interconnected but spaced well apart from each other. It combines complementary materials of timber, marble and blackened stainless steel that all work harmoniously together.’ 

In line with other areas of design currently, the materials are mixed within the individual pieces, mashing up colours and textures, while maintaining a streamlined elegance. MA promotes the idea not only that bathroom design should be the aesthetic, elevated equal of other areas of the home, but that it can itself break free of the confines of a dedicated room and integrate into other spaces. ‘You can use it outside a bathroom,’ says James White, from the Foster + Partners design team. ‘It can sit in a bedroom and you have the option to walk 360° around the object. Elements could also appear in a hallway and other areas in the house.’

Though unique in its clean-lined sculptural forms, conceptually MA slides comfortably in alongside Falper’s Eccentrico by Victor Vasilev, pedestal basins and washstands that mix up wood, ceramic, metal and marble. This year, Vasilev added a groove to the walnut, boosting the textural interest in the totemic washbasins and stands. Alongside the floating units of Vasilev’s Minimum series which mix wood and Cristalplant, MA and Eccentrico can be found populating the Living Bathroom™ area of the Falper showroom, where boundaries are busted and bathrooms emerge from the shadows into places we might want to linger long after the washing is done.

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