As rapid and volatile change continues to change the way we live and work, we look to one of the global industry’s leading lights for insight and direction.

Speaking to her about her practice, the past year and her collaborations with bathroom specialist LAUFEN, Patricia Urquiola reveals herself as a woman who is very much looking to the future as she explores the ways in which her design prowess can contribute to the changing face of working and living. Understanding that design can lead in the workplace by fostering safety and wellbeing, Urquiola is using her unique talent to pave the way with new and exciting product collections that are both visionary and practical but always inspirational.

Alice Blackwood: As a busy designer, how do you like to begin your day and what and where is your happy place?

Patricia Urquiola: I like waking up pretty early, it gives me time to organise my day and start it with my family, having breakfast together. The first thing I do when I wake up is read the news on my iPad while drinking coffee. Right afterwards, I start thinking about my daily appointments. I go through my messages, reply and see things that my team sends me. I do some research for projects, take books and materials from home to the studio. My happy place is where my family is.

At this time what challenges and excites you?

First thing that came to my mind is Salone del Mobile, scheduled for September 2021. We missed it in 2020 and I really hope we will be able to celebrate the 60th edition in a proper way. Milan and the whole design industry are looking forward to it. Even this year, we will all have to go through new challenges and difficulties, it will not be the same fair as before, we need to become more and more adaptive.

Can you describe how your practice and design approach has evolved?

I think my method is still more or less the one I had when I started my career. It means I go through a lot of research; I look for inspiration in every creative discipline, but also in the simple actions of everyday life and in the world that surrounds me. Then, when the design process starts, I constantly look for the dialogue, with both the client and my team. A good designer needs to deeply enjoy the whole process, with its challenges, changes and most importantly mistakes. They are essential, I have learnt a lot from my mistakes.

 

What do you love most about designing for the bathroom? And given that we are all spending so much more time at home, working, homeschooling and living out all facets of our daily life, has the role of the bathroom changed, in your view?

The bathroom is a place for retreat and self-care. Especially during the past months we spent at home, we realised that our bathrooms have become almost like our personal spa, in which we can really spend moments of privacy and wellbeing. We can finally relax in our bathtubs, while before we were used to just having a fast shower before going out again. Design of bathrooms will follow this re-discovery of this pleasant domestic moment.

 

Tell me about your new release for LAUFEN and the points of investigation (for example, sound waves, sculpting surfaces) that define this?

For me, Sonar stands for contrasts, balance, elegance: the rigour of architectural minimalism, formal understatement, and the dynamism of water and sound waves in close relationship. My aim was to combine these apparently widely separated sources of inspiration into a collection that is the expression of a gentle balance between angles and curves.

Bathroom aside, you work with many of the world’s leading design brands. What makes your partnership with LAUFEN special for you?

Well, we first worked together in 2016 on the brand’s showroom in Madrid, [Spain]. From that first collaboration, a positive relationship started to grow between my team and LAUFEN’s. So, we started collaborating on a design collection, which began with LAUFEN’s SaphirKeramik, the world’s thinnest ceramic. I wanted to explore and interpret the unique and interesting characteristics of this material, in terms of design, form and function. From this, the Sonar project started to take shape.

I always state that the best part of my job is the joy of the process and this was absolutely the case with LAUFEN.

Patricia Urquiola
patriciaurquiola.com

This article originally appeared in issue #83 of Indesign