When Architects Go to the Bathroom: talsee

“Never the same, only similar” was a tongue-in-cheek pearl of Eastern wisdom I was once offered in a Chinese restaurant many years ago by a waiter – a humorous response to my request to order the same as my dining companion. Beyond this wry piece of wit, there was perhaps a more serious point being made here: we’re all individuals and, therefore, experience things differently, based on our fundamental difference in need and desire.

Switzerland has managed to turn its tradition of expert production and fine craftsmanship into one of the alpine nation’s core brand values. Quality as standard. But in the bathroom sector, there’s one manufacturer that’s gone off-piste, as it were, continuing to adhere to the mantra of quality first while offering its customers non-standardised, customised solutions for their individual projects – be they contract or residential. Same quality, different end-product.

In business since 1896, award-winning bathroom brand talsee has made it its business from the start to Do Things Right. Anyone arriving at its flagship showroom in the small Swiss town of Hochdorf, near Lucerne, understands this immediately. Adjoining the company’s streamlined manufacturing facility, the double-height, landmark building – designed by Burkard Meyer Architects, with creative input from talsee CEO Bruno Scherer – functions not only as an impressive space for staging talsee’s innovative range of value-added, architecturally led bathroom products (with offices and other administrative rooms off the first-floor gallery), it also serves, with its archly cantilevered roof and colonnading, as an emphatic statement. This is architecture as branding.

It’s this solutions-oriented mindset that makes talsee the go-to manufacturer of bathroom furniture, mirrors, showers and bathtubs for architects and planners, looking to specify products that enable their creative vision to be realised in full, rather than requiring compromises in it. Every element that passes through talsee’s production plant is numbered and bears the client’s details, such is the level of detail their solutions offer.

Bernhard Aebi of Bern-based architectural office Aebi & Vincent Architekten certainly agrees. When it came to selecting the right partner for their high-end Areal Wendelsee apartment building on Lake Thun, talsee was really the only choice. ‘For both master and guest bathrooms, our concept was that the bathtubs, showers and basins all look as if they had been carved from ice, like that covering the mountains opposite the site. To achieve this effect, we decided on Corian – and on talsee. They just got our ideas, demonstrating how it was possible to bring together large elements seamlessly.’

The precision craftsmanship of the pared-down forms made, says Aebi, for a series of bathroom spaces that communicate value and elegance. The generous double-washbasins, whose surface extends both left and right into wall niches, paired with full-height, built-in mirrors (replete with dimmable lighting and concealed storage) testify to this.

In Zurich meanwhile, the northern part of the city continues to undergo regeneration with projects such as Max Dudler Architekten’s Quadroplatz – four office blocks of differing heights, with retail spaces at street level, organised around a new public square – weaving a new urban fabric. With the grid ruling supreme, in terms not only of the development’s plan, but also of the volumes’ facades, a certain rationality was also needed for the fit-out of the MainTower’s toilet spaces, to dovetail with the overarching architectural concept.

In spite of the fact that no two toilet layouts within the building are the same, talsee worked with the architects to deliver a customised solution for each of the spaces. ‘talsee was the only supplier able to deliver a quality, tailored, Swiss-made solution within the available budget,’ explains Christian Moeller-Deplazes from Max Dudler.

Every washbasin-housing, which fits perfectly into a differently sized niche, as well as every ultra-slim mirror, were made to measure. The former – in black laminate, complementing the dark, grid-like, mosaic-tiled walls – features an integrated bin for used paper towels as well as a soap dispenser. Even in this most minimal of spaces, the architectural is articulated to the full. ‘Our practice’s reduced and typological design language – which subscribes to the Miesian aphorism of “less is more” – found expression in talsee’s bathroom furniture, too, meaning the entire project could be seen as a harmonious whole.’

When it comes to architecturally meaningful, perfectly performing bathrooms, there’s certainly nothing watered down about talsee.

© Architonic