With Jean-Marie Massaud’s interpretation of a fitting as a de-technified sculpture, Axor opened up new horizons in the search for fresh design concepts, stylistic answers for the bathroom and the utilization of drinking water. There is an allusion to a new culture in design which interprets the human being as part of the environment and his/her desire for unison with nature as a basic need. There is an analogy with the belief that technology in our living environment should perform a purely functional role without getting involved with aesthetics. Human beings need the feeling of sensual closeness to the primal elements of nature for their wellbeing.
Among all the fashionable baroque tones of present-day designs, one trend is increasingly dominant: round, soft contours with flowing lines in an environment of predominantly geometrical simplicity and minimalist rectilinearity.

The aesthetic of the “Spiralling Tower� by Zaha Hadid, designed for the university building in Barcelona, is infinitely fascinating. It winds from the ground up with irregularly aligned floors like a tall sculpture. Despite its futuristic character, it conveys the feeling of a sanctuary. And it is far from an accident that the ‘Kunsthaus’ in Graz by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, which was completed in 2003, appears more sedate than threatening with its amoeba-like shell and has promptly been dubbed the “friendly alien�.

 

The fact that world-class designers and architects take nature as their role model when designing chairs like leaves, roofs like whales and hallstands that resemble entangled branches cannot be dismissed merely as a fashionable retro trend. What tipped the scales was more likely the growing desire for greater harmony with nature, which the designers express. They are looking for balance amid the increasing stresses of modern life, which is dominated by technology and alienation from nature. The stronger the desire for a natural relationship with our environment, the more classical, timeless and beautiful the irregular circle of a lake, the soft wavy lines on a beach or the grain on a rough beam seem to be.
When design and material can strike these emotional chords, it is really secondary whether we are really walking on a beach, the forest floor or the heated floor of our bathroom.
Designers and architects like Jean-Marie Massaud, Zaha Hadid and Toyo Ito are ultimately not concerned with imitating nature, but rather the sensual perception of our environment and ourselves through an encounter with natural elements.

Many creative minds are today increasingly fascinated by nature’s construction blueprints. They copy the dynamic structures and construction principles and adopt them for the design of chairs or suspended timber lamella roofs covering town squares. Others, however, are exploring the mystery of the relationship between human beings and nature. Their products develop their own style, bringing the symbolism of natural design motifs into play. When we look at the museums of Frank O’Gehry, the modern airports and glass-roofed shopping centres of Renzo Piano as well as the architecture and furniture of Jean-Marie Massaud, we quickly realise that nothing has been put together by using the Lego block principle – rather, the designs evolved from an idea “from the inside�. The often irregular or spiralling bodies and lines – made famous by the Sydney opera house or the recent example of the high-rise apartment building “Turning Torso� in Malmø – look as if they were grown rather than built.