LUA Designstory
The new LUA collection designed by Toan Nguyen for LAUFEN pays tribute to the ritual of water through pure, linear design that stems from painstaking research on form, based on our everyday relationship with the bath environment.
“We all experience the bathroom in a different way. Bathing is a part of our life, and for me LUA represented a challenge, to create a collection that is very simple and extremely complete at the same time, in each of its parts: from the ceramics to the furnishings, the bathtubs to the taps.”
LUA is the result of dialogue between LAUFEN and Toan Nguyen, and of the need on the part of the Swiss company specialized in the production of complete premium bathroom solutions to have an accessible collection, with contemporary design, featuring materials of the highest quality. Inspired by the holistic approach LAUFEN has always applied in its conception of the bath environment, Toan Nguyen has created a complete collection in which all the elements are in perfect tune, with an ideal balance of form, function and sensorial pleasure. The force of LUA lies in its ability to also fit into other collections from the wide-ranging LAUFEN catalogue, thus offering a high level of personalization in the bathroom.
“More than ever the quality of the individual space is an absolute priority and the bathroom is probably the most intimate space”.
“I wanted to create a form that is like a part of our collective memory. When you are designing, sometimes there is a tendency to exaggerate, to generate a sign, to make the product different”. All the pieces in the collection are based on the form of an oval, with slightly flexed extremities: a new geometric shape that required an extensive series of drawings and studies to obtain a linear result that is extremely logical and functional at the same time.
“For me design is above all an approach, a close attention to the object applied to the craftsmanship of excellence as well as serial production such as LUA”
For Toan Nguyen, no single piece is more important than the others. Each has its own specific role inside the collection: as in an orchestra, where all the instruments have to be in perfect tune to create a perfect symphony, so each item of LUA has been honed down to the smallest details to offer a perfect balance of form and maximum usage flexibility.
The bathroom is the most intimate space in the home, but also when we are traveling, we want it to be as functional and comfortable as possible: the room’s interior is like a concentrated work of architecture, where every part has a precise purpose, and has to coexist in total balance with light, sounds and materials.
Human beings and their relationships with objects are the central focus of Toan Nguyen’s work, and with LUA he has made a collection that perfectly combines pure forms and high levels of workmanship.
“The experience and the expertise of Laufen were the key. To arise the interest of such a company means that maybe we have understood something, and we can push the limits further”.
In over a decade of collaboration with Laufen, Toan has been able to constantly meet new challenges, experimenting in areas of production that sometimes have yet to be explored. LUA is the result of a long process of research conducted by the designer and the company, to generate a complete collection composed of washstands, washbasins, sanitary fixtures and bathtubs, as well as a line of taps, cabinets and storage units in neutral colours.
Fluid, modular and timeless
LUA starts from a holistic bathroom concept, complete in all its parts but also extremely flexible and therefore adaptable to any living need.
It is no coincidence that LAUFEN chose Casa Albero, the villa designed by architects Giuseppe Perugini together with his wife Uga De Plaisant and their son Raynaldo Perugini at the end of the 1960s, to set the shots of the new LUA collection.
A very high example of brutalist architecture, Casa Albero has a modular structure designed to be as flexible as possible, replicable and infinitely expandable and characterized by a few simple materials such as concrete, glass and iron that do not fail to give it lightness.
It is a construction that condenses a visionary thought in the purest way and with maximum functionality: therefore, starting from a spatiality that is as flexible as possible, the architects have created an architecture that can also be adapted to new future uses.
The elements linked to nature, the modularity of the project and the relationship between form and function of Casa Albero, bring to mind the link with water, the purity and precision of the geometric lines that derive from a long research and experimentation on the matter. that distinguish the design of LUA.
Media contact
Marc Millenet
id pool GmbH
+49 711 954645-0
laufen@id-pool.de
