Duravit Bathware – Meet the Designers

Duravit continues to set trends for the future while simultaneously focusing its product range as a brand manufacturer of modern designer bathrooms, in conjunction with world renown Designers.

Duravit has been the proud recipient of numerous international design awards. These awards celebrate bold design, which has become Duravit’s hallmark over the years. Second, there are the designers themselves. Each designer is a specialist in his field – a prominent global innovator with an inherent sense for good design. Good design, as Duravit and its designers see it, is never at the expense of practicality – neither is interested in “design for design’s sake”.

Even though we are living in an era of high-tech and automation, when it comes to products with such a high claim to design and function, quality still highly depends on human skill. Duravit continues to maintain a great deal of craftsmanship to ensure this high standard. This applies to the manufacturing of ceramic as well as to all other production areas at Duravit.

Lets meet the Designers,

Kurt Merki Jr.

Kurt Merki Jr. was born in 1978 in Accra, Ghana, as the oldest son of Kurt Merki Sr., a Swiss master joiner, and his Ghanaian wife, a fashion designer who studied in London in the 1960s. He trained as a joiner in his father’s furniture factory. He moved to Switzerland in 1997, and it was here in Lucerne that he passed his examination to become a master furniture joiner in 1999. From 2001 to 2008 he worked as an interior designer for a variety of architectural firms in Zurich, after which he went to Milan in order to expand his knowledge of design at the Scuola Politecnica di Design. After receiving his master’s degree in interior and product design here, in 2009 he worked at the Studio Antonio Citterio in Milan before soon returning to Zurich, where he opened his own design studio in 2010. For Duravit, he has designed the bathroom furniture range for the Vero ceramic range and the faucets for the C.1 range.

DURAVIT VERO RANGE

Cecilie Manz

Cecilie Manz was born in 1972 in Odsherred, Denmark. She encountered design during her childhood in the ceramic workshop of her parents, both artists involved with design. Her career began in 1992 with an academic education at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – The School of Design, where Cecilie Manz specialized in furniture and everyday objects. Very early on she became interested in functional and conceptual design, which took her as a foreign exchange student to the UIAH, University of Art and Design in Helsinki. A semester abroad at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki increased Manz’s awareness of the characteristics of Scandinavian design. In 1998, just a year after graduating from the Danish School of Design, Cecilie Manz founded her own company, which has been the focus of her work ever since. She is very successful with her designs of lamps, furniture and accessories for the home; she works with well-known manufacturers such as Bang & Olufsen’s B&O Play, Fritz Hansen, Fredericia Furniture, Nils Holger Moormann, Lightyears, Georg, Jensen Damask, Iittala and Muuto. Cecilie Manz’s products are exhibited all over the world, and her creations are to be found in the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Design Museum Denmark. She has received several major awards for her conceptional design.

DURAVIT LUV RANGE

Norman Foster

Is it design or is it architecture?

In any case, it is genuine Foster. Sensational, like all his work: Stansted Airport in London and Chek Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and the new German Reichstag. Once again, the architect and designer Norman Foster has excelled himself and created a bathroom suite that pushes the boundaries, which defines the bathroom anew. How has he done this? Quite simply. Two adjacent circles define the geometry of the whole range. Plus the archetype of two cupped hands scooping fresh water.

DURAVIT FOSTER RANGE

Philippe Starck

Philippe-Patrick Starck was born in Paris on the 18th January 1949, the son of aircraft designer André Starck and his wife Jacqueline. Starck spent his childhood under his father’s drawing board, where he would spend hours sawing, cutting, glueing and sanding. From his father, Philippe inherited his inventive nature, and from his mother his poetic view of the world and his elegant life style. It was she who advised him to study design at the École Nissim de Camondo in Paris. Starck took his first steps as a designer using inflatable objects before he became known for the furnishing of the private quarters in the Élysée Palace of French President François Mitterand. Shortly afterwards, his interior design of the Café Costes in Paris made him an international star. Today he creates “intelligent” objects with a commitment to humanity: Television (Thomson), luggage (Samsonite), kettles, knives, vases, watches, scooters, motorbikes (Aprilia), prams (Maclaren), computer mice (Microsoft), even ships and houses – all in all objects for all aspects of life.

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