It is the room that we enter first thing in the morning and leave last thing at night. That helps us to wake up in the morning and relax at night, that – in other words – accompanies us in the transition from and to sleep. These days the bathroom is no longer the sober, purely functionally arranged wet cell. In fact, more and more comfortable elements are permeating the bathroom: Carpets, pieces of furniture like an easy chair or a bookshelf, accessories like vases or candles are changing the previously purely functional hygiene area into a living and feelgood space. With this the bathroom becomes a fundamental and integral part of modern living.
This is also highlighted in international furniture trade fairs like the Salone del Mobile in Milan where the bathroom takes up an increasingly important role. The furniture sector has recognised that the bathroom is gaining in importance in the design of an apartment. Furniture manufacturers as well as wholesalers use trade fairs or their own showrooms for new presentations of modern living. Merging bathroom and bedroom is a part of this trend, the two intimate rooms which can definitely develop a sensible spatial synergy – this can be seen, for example, in the furniture store architare (
www.architare.de) in Nagold (Germany) or the exhibit of the bed manufacturer ‘Ruhe & Raum’ during the 2009 imm cologne.
A successful merging of sleeping and bathing is also demonstrated by the room concept of Axor Urquiola: here these two areas grow together almost naturally and fuse into a harmonic interaction between sleeping, personal hygiene, relaxation and recuperation. With the free-standing Axor Urquiola room divider, which also serves as a radiator sending warmth into the room, allows the sleeping and bathroom area to be divided optically while still remaining as one. But Patricia Urquiola takes it one step further: with a cosmetic corner with its own basin, she takes the bathroom element into the bedroom – just as it was commonly done in the 19th century. In those days the washbowls with the jug were placed directly beside the bed or on the dresser in the bedroom. With this approach of bringing water into the room from which one emerges every morning before washing, and into which one retreats after washing in the evening, Patricia Urquiola merges bedroom and bathroom and thus consistently completes her room concept.
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