59 GROHE Magazine 58 INTERVIEW GABRIELLE COX Redesigning a classic is a task not to be taken lightly It s a design opportunity that involves walking a tightrope between respecting the past and opening oneself up to contemporary ideas GROHE s Vice President of Design Mi chael Seum however was delighted to step up to the challenge with the classic GROHE Atrio faucet It was he says an exciting opportuni ty to build on the strengths of this GROHE icon while giving it a feeling of timelessness GROHE What was the idea behind the new Atrio Michael Seum For me the very definition of an icon is something you can draw from memory We are calling this the icon of elegance and precision The elegance is drawn from a single circle or a cylinder ring which is one of the most feminine geometrical fea tures you can find pure and perfect It s a firmly contemporary design but with the right interior decor strategy it could fit in a classic or cosmopolitan environ ment Because we ve used such a simple singular geometry the precision has an analogue tactile feel to it So much of this world is digital and uber connected that we felt like for our spa collection we need ed to have this tactility And it s done in such a way that even when you look at the design all of the intersections are precise Nothing is off center G How is this driven by the technology that s inside like the cartridges MS The quality of the design comes through the craftsmanship and also the precision of our high quality cartridges There are three principles that we drew from the cylindrical element that drives the entire line an absolute pure intersection of all these geometries and lastly the obses sive attention to proportion We wanted a design that celebrates the quality of the GROHE cartridge it s the perfect expres sion of our design DNA G Also it s a very slim cylinder that makes it elegant for me How long have you and your team had been working on this from the first sketch to now MS We had a discussion about the possibility of having the spa geometry perfectly inter sect I think about 18 months ago While we came pretty quickly to the idea the execution was actually the hardest part of the job getting the engineering team to find a way to do that G So really this was something that was sparked by your team and became a col laborative effort what challenges did you have to overcome with engineering MS The engineers saw the potential of the de sign But they also saw that it was their responsibility to help us realize it So I m really pleased at how they ve embraced the design vision and made all of the tech nical elements work going through such meticulous geometrical work with the Atrio This is where the precision comes in All of the tactile feedback the craftsman ship the quality the handmade aspects it s all due to their efforts G How has the feedback on this product been so far MS We ve had some sneak previews with a few long standing customers and archi tects that we have very positive relation ships with We do a lot of work on projects that are two to five years big architec ture projects and the response when we put this on the table is just jaw dropping It really is iconic it s beautiful it s flexible and it s simple We designed something that allows architects or consumers to de sign spaces in so many different ways The fact that the product is so simple means that it can work with different interior strategies They see that immediately G What plans do you have for the Atrio in the future MS We will launch it in Spa Colours over time Because this design is so neutral we be lieve that this is the vehicle for expressing new color and finish possibilities in the bathroom It s a design that works in so many different environments from classic to contemporary and cosmopolitan It has this transformative effect in those spaces The new Atrio was designed with an obsessive attention to proportion GROHE Vice President of Design Michael Seum talks about revisiting a classic challenging the engineers and creating an icon in the new Atrio RECRAFTING AN ICON Pure Freude an Wasser

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