Anything but standard: How AXOR is redefining our understanding of luxury

What is luxury in the age of everything, always and everywhere? AXOR, as a brand for upscale bathroom culture, gets to the bottom of this question with its ‘Distinctive’ project. Whereas status symbols were once seen as a means of expressing a luxurious lifestyle, they have long since been reevaluated, worn out in their expensive, extra-rare and extravagant garb. One only has to look at the queues in front of the exclusive boutiques in our city centres to sense that the meaning of luxury has shifted to the mainstream.

Individualisation as the ultimate luxury

In a two-part Whitepaper entitled ‘Expressing your personality’, AXOR paints a more contemporary perspective that focuses on self-realisation rather than imitating a preconceived image. ‘Individualisation is the megatrend of a society that is constantly becoming more and more differentiated’, introduces the first of the two papers, which focuses on finding one's own personality, the role of designers, products and spaces – with particular focus on the bathroom. This raises the legitimate question of the function of a brand. If everything can be individualised to the highest degree, if users feel personally addressed and belong to a brand, does this not at the same time lead to the general perception of brands dissolving? The text provides an answer that, at the very least, brand identity must be rethought, positioned as a means of reducing complexity, and loaded with tangible values and qualities.

What does this mean for the self-development space of the bathroom? While the modern age coil boast of its ability to mass-produce products, the digital modern age is able to realise every wish, no matter how personal, in each individual piece. In addition, the home is at times increasingly like a stage, a social place with often functionally open rooms. The bathroom, on the other hand, as a usually smaller room in the home, is ideally suited to being sensually and holistically personalised to individual needs.

What does this mean for the self-development space of the bathroom? While the modern age coil boast of its ability to mass-produce products, the digital modern age is able to realise every wish, no matter how personal, in each individual piece. In addition, the home is at times increasingly like a stage, a social place with often functionally open rooms. The bathroom, on the other hand, as a usually smaller room in the home, is ideally suited to being sensually and holistically personalised to individual needs.

The Blade Runner Bathroom

This is well illustrated, for example, by the concept bathroom of Paris-based designer Tristan Auer, whom AXOR asked to realise his personal vision of a luxurious oasis of well-being for its ‘From Personalities for Personalities’ campaign. Auer is not actually known for developing shorthand interiors that seem to have sprung straight out of a film. The architect focuses on the needs and stylistic preferences of his clients, translating them into lively mixtures of colours and eras with pointed lighting concepts. For AXOR, he was allowed to consider himself his own client for once and slips into the role of blockbuster hero Rick Deckard for the occasion. In a flat in Hong Kong, he transfers the dystopian atmosphere from the film ‘Blade Runner’ – shady and bathed in a cool blue through the mirrors framed by neon strips, reminiscent of the incessant flickering of old advertising signs in the streets of a megacity.

But it is not quite so dystopian. The fact is that here – unlike in Ridley Scott's film, which was set in the Los Angeles of 2019 – you are allowed to relax completely instead of going on a replicant hunt. This is expressed quite unmistakably in the choice of warm materials: the bathtub, the washstand and other details made of light and dark travertine, matt-reflecting dark walls and golden fittings from the AXOR Edge series by Jean-Marie Massaud. Only an absolute individualist and film nerd would furnish his bathroom like this. The uniqueness of the setting is enhanced by details such as the prismatic structure milled in a high-precision diamond cut, with which the fittings have been refined in the Polished Gold Optic colour. If you want something even more unique, AXOR products can also be inscribed or engraved as desired using the company's customisation service.

Counter design to the globalised standard

Who did Tristan Auer really have in mind when he designed his Personalities bathroom for AXOR? ‘It's for a man. Clearly self-centred. The guy only thinks about himself. He likes to collect. He is a hedonist,’ says the architect. About luxury, he says, ‘Luxury for me means having something made for you. And that changes everything. When you have something made for you, you only need it once. So it's going in the right direction, not to consume too much.’ And so suddenly the concept follows a reverse logic, the opposite of the original one.

You can read the detailed whitepaper here which includes an excursion into the history of industrialisation, as well as numerous examples of contemporary digital consumer culture.

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