IN CONVERSATION WITH | Giuseppe Maurizio Scutellà IN CONVERSATION WITH... Maurizio Scutellà Giuseppe
Stylish, sophisticated but compact, the new Rak-Petit range was the brainchild of Italian designer Giuseppe Maurizio Scutellà. Vicki Evans speaks to him about the new collection and design in the bathroom market in general
Q & A
Q: What’s your impression of design in the bathroom industry? A: Our conception of the bathroom is of a sophisticated, comfortable and, above all, welcoming home environment. An area of the home usually dedicated to ourselves, where we can enjoy being alone.
Q: The collection you recently designed with RAK Ceramics – RAK-Petit – is for compact bathrooms. Why was designing for smaller spaces so important? A: Recently we have had to learn how to live confi ned within our homes. I think that among the many limitations we have learnt to appreciate details that in our previous life escaped us or at best we took less notice of.
Paradoxically, the leading com - panies that produce interiors have remained busy throughout the Covid situation, because people want more from their homes. They want to be at ease in the place where they feel safest. We cannot all live in villas or castles, but this does not mean that we cannot have the same quality, the same dedicated details in apparently more contained situations.
Q: When you think luxury bathrooms you tend to picture large spaces. Can you get luxury design on a small scale? A: Designing in large rooms allows you greater freedom; adding is very simple, removing is more diffi cult. That said, what does luxury mean? Flaunt fi nishes? Add tubs as large as swimming pools? I wanted to give a different answer. I understood luxury as attention to detail dedicated to the people who would use it, who might not have grasped it immediately, but would have discovered it over time – as a gesture of love.
Q: The new collection is both stylish and practical. How do you balance the two things? A: This should be the aim of a good project, so if RAK-Petit communicates this feeling, it means that I did a
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Rak-Petit wall-hung round washbasin
good job. As I said, it was more diffi cult for several reasons. The fi rst being that, given the small size, proportions had to be perfect and the details that characterise it had to be sophisticated, but not expensive.
Q: As a designer, what do you consider good design? A: Create something that does not follow trends. It would be hypo- critical to say that I am not infl uenced by what is around us, but create something that meets the true and intimate needs of those who will be the users, and start by always asking the right questions, not the obvious ones. Remember that some objects may stay with us for a short time, others, like a bathroom, for
many years. The great projects of the masters that have become timeless I like to think were born from the intellectual honesty of the designers.
Q: What inspires your designs? A: It derives from everything I love – art in general. Because even if art is quite distinct from industrial products, it has in itself a vital breath that extends to beauty, art and culture and
Rak-Petit wall-hung basin with square profi le
All the rest of the work came from a continuous conversation with them – above all to contain the costs of a collection that could not be very expensive, but where I did not want to give up the glamour that everyone deserves for their bathroom.
What does luxury design actually mean? Flaunt fi nishes? Add tubs as large as swimming pools? I wanted to give a different answer
that should be shared and taught to everyone. Surely then, inclu- ding all the great postwar desi gners from Bauhaus on wards. And, of course, the whole Italian school, from architect Angelo Man gia rotti (whom I had the good fortune to
meet), Castiglioni, Munari, Enzo Mari, Gae Aulenti, and the enlightened entrepreneur, engineer and president of Artemide, Ernesto Gismondi (who recently passed away), who allowed me to become a designer.
Q: From start to fi nish, describe the design process of RAK-Petit? A: I started from a precise technical request provided by RAK Ceramics.
Q: What do you see as the future for bathroom design? A: Who would have predicted that the whole world would be locked in their houses for more than a year? So I will not be a false prophet by giving you false formulas for certain future scenarios.
I can only tell you that who we were before, we will remain even after, with our desire to love, to live and to enjoy the little things and objects that have kept us company. I hope that we will appreciate the things we choose much more –that we will not be too easily satisfi ed. We deserve more, so unfortunately it will be a process of natural selection that will reward only the things that best meet the real needs of the people.
But I want to regard it as an opportunity and an aspiration for all of us.
· June 2021
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