Due to Laufen‘s forward-thinking approach as a manufacturer of innovative solutions, the company was selected by Purpose Design for inclusion in the Sleep Concept Hotel at the recent Sleep London event.
The Sleep Concept Hotel invites designers to plan and build a life-sized hotel room following a specific brief which, this year, was inspired by nostalgia for the 1960s. The Concept Hotel featured five rooms or hotel areas, each of them very different, but sharing in the common aspiration to provoke discussion and to inspire the future of hotel design.
Laufen’s solid surface material -“which can be used by designers to create bespoke basins, bathtubs and furniture – was incorporated into Purpose Design’s Concept Hotel bathroom.
“As part of the room set, I wanted to illustrate how a 3D printed bathroom pod may look in the future, when large-scale printing technology is available,” says Gail Thomson, director of Purpose Design. “It was this concept that formed the backbone of the en-suite design.”
“To accomplish this effect, I wanted to explore the use of a solid surface material and how it could be adapted to form any shape. Having worked with Laufen on some of our international projects, and having seen what they achieved for us previously using solid surface manufacturing, they seemed the obvious collaboration.”
Ilker Hussein, manager of global projects at Laufen, was greatly pleased with the final result: “Our initial discussion with Gail was to supply a simple washbasin and WC pan, but then Gail outlined her idea of a 3D printing concept, which inspired us to give it a go!” he explains.
“Within two months a simple sketch became the bathroom you see now. The scheme developed from a very organic design to a more linear creation. Our customisation team worked very closely, in great detail, to work with Gail’s creativity, pushing the boundaries of what we had ever done before.”
