The notion of design tends to rely more on function than on creativity – bookshelves for books, desks for work, lights for bulbs, coffee tables for beverages, etc. — these products tend to implicitly promises to enhance or improve our daily lives. To think outside the parameters of “function” — to imagine a radically different idea of normal is at its best most ambitious. Deconstructing long-standing notions about the form and function is the idea of this project.

Hansgrohe’s designer brand of bath fixtures, Axor, has always been a game changer when it comes to visionary designs for the bathroom.  Axor partnered with the Swedish design trio Front, and Japanese design studio Nendo, to create their very own Axor WaterDream installations – “alternative visions for the bathroom as a living space”, with unexpected and unconventional answers to bathroom concepts.

The focus is not primarily on the products but on providing additional scope for creative development, for breaking down established behavior patterns, and for conducting an open, interdisciplinary dialogue.

While Front experimented with exposing the technical aspects of water systems, creating a space-defining, copper-tube sculpture that turns typically hidden infrastructure into a lustrous spectacle, Nendo chose to switch the bathroom with the living room (and all their respective social and emotional connotations) by designing hybrid furniture, like lamps that double as shower heads suspended over minimalist, waterproof living room furniture.

However different in appearance, both projects work toward deconstructing long-standing notions about the form and function of the bathroom.