Italian architect and designer Antonio Citterio is renowned for creating spaces that transport individuals to a mood as much as a physical place. He’s a designer of sets and a storyteller as well as a creator of objects. As he says: “I always imagine the product in a movie set, an ambiance where people interact with the product and the space.” His latest collaboration with AXOR—a collection of distinctive bathroom fixture designs—is a paradigm of his craft, expanding the idea of the objects into idealized "light box" domestic spaces, in which they feature. One of these spaces is his "Nature Bound Vacation Home" concept.
The focal point of the concept is a bathroom with a single object containing both bathtub and wash basin. It is freestanding, with space between it and wall and window, taking the eye to the outside world. It is a relaxing space, similar in mood to a remote, super modern, European retreat. The texture on the touch points of the faucets is there to remind you that the water flowing from the mechanism is elemental. “The object you touch with your hands,” says Citterio, “should give you an idea of the luxury that water is.”
The visual elements of the AXOR Citterio C bathroom invite touch, and as well as being tactile, each fixture and material in the "Nature Bound Vacation Home" contribute to a space in harmony with its natural environment. Citterio’s idealized bathroom is bright, finished with travertine, light cement and pale birch wood. Core products from the AXOR Citterio C collection feature: two faucets at the washbasins, a 3-hole rim mounted bath faucet, and, in the shower area, a thermostatic module in combination with a hand shower and overhead shower. For the finish on all, Citterio chose Brushed Black Chrome, one of the exclusive AXOR FinishPlus surfaces.
Since opening his design studio in the early 1970s, Citterio has honed an aesthetic that is based on simplicity and minimalism, along with the use of elevated materials and detail. The textured touch points of AXOR Citterio C are typical, as is the use of travertine in the Vacation Home space—a warm and visually light material native to Italy. Citterio grew up in Meda during the 1950s economic boom in Italy, a town renowned for its population of artisans, embraced by the contemporary international design community as a peerless resource for manufacturing. Citterio’s work today can be sharp, ergonomic, or geometric—sometimes all at once—from a chair to an apartment complex. It has won him two Compasso d’Oro awards, the most revered accolade in design. The "Nature Bound Vacation Home" demonstrates what he does best, artfully shaping a set of fixtures to be sensuous in silhouette, and then putting them into a broader, inspiring context. That travertine has a lot of nuances already. “It is not really precise, and I like this,” says the designer. “You have memory in the stone.”
For this imaginary home, Citterio came up with a core narrative: This would be a Scandinavian beach house for a young and active family unconstrained by budget. It speaks to wellness as well as relaxation and time out. Natural daylight is scarce in the location he had imagined, hence the choice of colors, and the spacing within the room. Instead of an external wall, there is a single sheet of glass. The design is all about, he says, “welcoming natural light.” The Brushed Black Chrome of the faucets stands out against creamy travertine, emphasizing their slender form from every angle.
The freestanding tub and basin design was the starting point for the Nature Bound Vacation Home. “The idea is to have a completely free wall,” says Citterio. “We built the washbasin and bathtub into the middle of the room, so the pipes are coming from the floor. We started to think, what can we do so that everything in the bathroom is freestanding. If you add tubes from the floor to the ceiling, you can mount the mirror sections on the tubes, and the mirror can turn. So, everything is from ceiling or floor—also the brise-soleil, the lights, the hanging chair—and nothing is on the wall.”
Learn more about the AXOR Citterio C line here.
