name: Olivia Collection
client: Globo
date: 2010
project assistant: Alessandro Stabile
Popeye’s brazen pipe, or Magritte’s emblem/rebus “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”?
Much like the pipe that is not a pipe challenges the common way of looking at reality, so the Olivia collection of sanitary fixtures designed for Globo takes an ironic look forward thanks to the many innovative ideas that distinguish it as an authentic and original family of industrial design products. The design of all the elements of the Olivia family is characterized by one soft, enveloping and continuous form.
White, clean, essential: the floor-standing or suspended wall-mounted toilet bowl, conceals the siphon with one stroke of the pencil in a continuous ceramic curve. The toilet seat too, thanks to the brand new hinge design, perfectly completes the form of the fixture with a surface having no breaks or overhangs.
In the shelf washbasins, the slender line of the profile reduces the overall dimensions on the plane, to allow a more extended use dedicated to all the items we use in the bathroom.
However the family “centerpiece” is the urinal that capsizes the formal portrayal of this fixture which, from the floor up, uses one sculptural line to encompasses the pot opening. What is more, the urinal is eco-virtuous because it is less thirsty for water than the toilet bowl. Normally used in public bathrooms, if urinals were used more often in the home, we would definitely save water. The ecological commitment deeply felt by Globo is applied to this product, and to the entire collection.
The family is completed by the monolithic middle-of-the-room washbasin, another point in favor of this formal innovation; in spite of its clean slender shape it maintains a dialogue with the other elements of the series.