It’s all in the details: elevating modern bathrooms with JEE-O’s latest taps

Interior designers across the globe are redefining the bathroom as a place to linger longer. They are now being conceived as sanctuaries to lounge in while listening to music or reading a book, surrounded by plants and enjoying good views, whether inside or out. ‘Bathrooms have become pamper zones beyond a life necessity,’ Yasmine Gonheim of Melbourne-based interior design studio YGS has said recently. But it’s not just colour, cushions and cacti creating the contemplative spaces she describes, it’s the hardware too. ‘Tapware has to have a certain ease of use and a smooth finish, and a weight about it.’

Making taps count is the ambition of Dutch bathroom brand JEE-O, whose portfolio of products is conceived by a collection of influential designers, among them Grand & Johnson, Brian Sironi, Edward van Vliet and Osiris Hertman. Hovering somewhere between product and architecture, tap and shower fixtures are the defining details increasingly invested with the power to cement the ambience created by the hard architecture and the more decorative interior additions. JEE-O’s design collaborators are intent on making them work hard in both design and functionality to fulfil this important role.

Founder and designer Lammert Moerman has, in fact, been busy refining this defining role for tapware since 2004 when he launched JEE-O with a single sculptural free-standing shower. It’s what gave the brand its unique name – the shape was an upside-down J (JEE) and the controls were in the form of a ring (O). It has now grown to encompass sinks, tubs, mirrors and all kinds of accessories, but is perhaps best known for its original ambition; to develop bold but timeless designs for the parts that furnish us with water. Moerman has always invested his bathroom fixtures with the power to shape a mood; he sees them having an energising effect but also the part of the toolkit available to create a tranquil space for body and mind.

The latest family to join JEE-O’s fixture fold is Cone. The design is realised in collaboration with the studio of Dutch designer Osiris Hertman, who, since graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven has built a product portfolio that includes everything from sofas to clay pots, but whose niche has become those bits in between: door handles, acoustic panels, shutters and taps. 'Our philosophy is to create harmony between architecture and interior design,’ he says. In line with the current zeitgeist, he believes tranquillity is brought to a space when we mimic our natural surroundings.

Cone does the job with pieces built from beautiful elemental shapes, finely crafted – a signature of Hertman’s work. The lever handle is rounded at the end to soften the geometry and bring a comforting tactility. The design has been applied across an entire family of hardware – from freestanding, hand, wall and ceiling showers, to freestanding, wall-mounted and top-mounted mixer taps.

There is a robustness in Cone’s shape, but a roundness too, and the refined finish brings a timeless elegance – its features don’t mark it out as a piece of plumbing, but as a piece of considered design that harmonises with both the architecture and the softer decor.

There is also the option of new functionality to bring it bang up to date. JEE-O has embraced touchless technology and is applying it to its fixtures, old and new: Soho, Slimline, Pure and Cone included. Touchless taps operate with infrared sensors and are increasingly in demand, especially in public areas such as hotels and gyms where hygiene and water efficiency are paramount. Touchless technology answers both these concerns, and in JEE-O’s hands it is doing it without compromise to design – the workings are invisible.

Pure of form and clutter-free, tapware is proving it can be as much the hero of a bathroom designed for mind-clearing, body-purging dawdling, as a thicket of houseplants or a well-placed window.

© Architonic

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