In its more than 60-year history, the family-run kitchen and bathroom specialist Dornbracht not only invented the luxury fitting category (beginning with 1969’s Edition 2000), but has consistently refined and reimagined it — most often, and successfully, in collaboration with the famed German firm Sieger Design. “We’ve been working together for more than 30 years,” says Sieger Design CEO Christian Sieger. “It’s a constant interaction.”
© Sieger Design
The latest triumph in this ongoing partnership? Vaia, a collection of bathroom fittings that Dornbracht will unveil this month at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York City. It also marks what Sieger calls a “transitional style” both for the design firm and manufacturer, blending contemporary modernism with “classic elegance.”
Options include single- and cross-lever handles with clean geometric forms softened by slight slopes and tapers. “Handles are always a challenge,” he says with a laugh. “There is a hole in the washbasin that needs to be covered for the technology below, and on the other side, there are the limits of our hands, and those need to interact. It might be attractive to have a circle as a handle, but ergonomically it just doesn’t work as well.”
Handles rest on Vaia’s signature rosette bases, a supple touch that suggests the organic. Their elegant curves mark a shift away from the sharper angles of recent collections. “You don’t see these shapes often,” Sieger says. “Maybe in the stem of a wine glass or the end of a trumpet. Some of Eero Saarinen’s bases have this shape. There’s a certain sexiness to its bell end.”
The 168-millimeter-tall lavatory mixers and slightly shorter basin mixers (options include heights of 167 and 123 millimeters) boast silhouettes with a clean but languorous arc, all tapering to deceptively simple spouts. “It’s a perfectly balanced shape,” Sieger says, “but if you look at it sideways, the spout stops earlier than expected, so the water enters the sink at a different point than you’d predict. The aerator offers water in a softer more precise way, reaching out towards the user.”
Those two concepts — proportion and precision — are two of the “5 P” principles that animate all of Dornbracht’s designs. Another, progressiveness, prompted Sieger to examine his decades in the design business and the role Vaia should play in the marketplace. “The longer you’re in design, the more careful you become in terms of answering demands like sustainability. That’s why we aim for a solution that will last aesthetically, having designed a series that inspires the user to create a more transitional style in a bathroom setting.”
Another “P”? Personality. Vaia is offered in a sophisticated platinum matte or that crowd-favorite finish, chrome, which Sieger says, “is very cool and reflects the surroundings in a way that allows it to intermingle with the washbasin and backdrop. But people are starting to look for something warmer.” He and his team noted the influx of brass and rose gold accessories and incorporated those looks into a new, dark platinum matte available this fall in time for those colder darker nights. “It’s sort of like when you design a minimalist apartment and then integrate your parents’ leather sofa — you are mixing modern and classical elements. It inspires reliability, trust and a touch of heritage.”
As does the final “P” — performance. “We can go through 50 different handles,” Sieger explains, “to make sure we find the one we want, but really it’s about the user. When he touches it, he shouldn’t question whether it should have been smaller or bigger. That’s why we took 18 months of adding another millimeter here or there in total for the design and production process. Our development process was making sure we didn’t leave any tests undone.”
And it’s more than just how it feels: Users have to be able to, well, use it. “We were very aware, for the U.S. market, that Vaia had to be ADA-approved, and we designed it also with a handle version right from the start,” he says. “No one is limited from using the product.” Accessories including fittings for bidet, shower and bath applications further Vaia’s accessibility.
That blend of consideration and craftsmanship are, six decades on, deep in Dornbracht’s DNA:
In 2010, it became the first international manufacturer to completely rid its product lines of lead, fulfilling both American and German environmental recommendations, while still achieving beauty and utility. “The products should have clear lines, and they might look simple. But you must keep in mind that these are not products that are produced millions of times; they are more limited editions.” And so they must embody what Sieger calls fundamental. “It’s about beauty, balance, good proportion and good surfaces.”