Designer Konstantin Grcic has designed the Berlin showroom of sanitary ceramics manufacturer Laufen.
Designer Konstantin Grcic has created the Berlin showroom for sanitary ceramics manufacturer Laufen. Versatility played a central role in the design of the “Laufen Space”.
Berlin’s Kantstrasse has many different faces: the area around Savignyplatz has been home to upscale Berlin living culture for decades. Numerous national and international furniture, kitchen and sanitaryware manufacturers are represented here. A few steps further towards Charlottenburg station, the rougher but also hipper part of the street begins. This is where you will find the Japanese restaurant 893 Ryōtai by the style-setting Berlin chef and restaurateur The Duc Ngo. If you didn’t know any better and didn’t notice the small neon sign above the door, you’d think the graffiti-covered store in a run-down post-war building was empty.
Diagonally opposite the restaurant, the Swiss bathroom ceramics manufacturer Laufen recently opened its new “Space”. Here, too, the first glance through the shop windows of the Wilhelminian-style building does not make it easy to classify the use of the store. No wonder – after all, Konstantin Grcic wanted to create a place that could take on several tasks. This is not the first time that Grcic, the most important contemporary German designer, has worked with Laufen. His “Val” series, launched in 2015, is perhaps the most ambitious bathroom ceramics range currently in production in terms of design.
Opposite the shop window, the wall of the actual store has been opened up into a small windowless adjoining room, the walls and floor of which have been tiled completely in matt black. Grcic had a large video wall installed here, which frames the adjoining room like an apse. The main room, on the other hand, remains largely empty. The large open space is to be used for events and temporary exhibitions. Small pedestals on wheels, also tiled in black, can be set up to present products or exhibits.
Large shelf in a narrow room
Where the main room extends into the depths of the house, Grcic emphasizes this spatial depth with a projecting industrial shelf made of unpainted metal, the so-called archive. The manufacturer’s ceramic products are lined up on the shelf as if in a display depot. With this element, Konstantin Grcic cites the stands of Andreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hächler, who have been responsible for Laufen’s pioneering trade fair architecture in recent years. In turn, the Zurich-based architect couple took their inspiration for the large shelving constructions on the outside of the trade fair stands from the sample warehouses in Laufen’s production facilities. In Berlin, on the other hand, Grcic plays with the massive presence of the storage shelving, which is oversized for the small space.
At the back of the store, Konstantin Grcic also had a specially developed metal mounting system installed that allows different ceramic elements and furniture to be hung. This allows Laufen to demonstrate different combinations of washbasins, mirrors, WCs and wall units to customers or set up new exhibition displays in just a few simple steps.
The brand spirit as a showroom
Versatility and changeability are central themes in Grcic’s interior designs. Together with office furniture manufacturer Vitra, he has explored this in relation to variable workstations and developed the multifunctional “Stool-Tool” stool and the foldable “Hack” desk, for example. At Laufen-Space, he is now transferring this approach to the retail sector. In his considerations, he comes to a similar conclusion as OMA/AMO did when designing the flagship store of fashion label Off-White in Miami: in both spaces, the rooms are at least as much an event area as they are a presentation venue for products. And in both cases, it is this event area that is linked to the outdoor space and not the product display.
In Berlin as in Miami, of course, there is the same reasoning behind this spatial arrangement: the store is no longer primarily a sales area, it must convey the spirit of a brand and make it tangible. In the age of online retail, the actual sale of goods only plays a subordinate role. Due to the coronavirus, the new Laufen space is not yet able to play its role and offer the “experience” that will secure the future existence of brick-and-mortar retail. In this case, this is of secondary importance, as the space is aimed less at end consumers than at specialist retailers and craftsmen, architects and project developers. For this target group, Konstantin Grcic has created an experience space that expresses the self-image of the Laufen brand in a highly concise way.
