Clean living: MAD Architects design a sparkling new gallery for Roca in Beijing
The contemporary ideal when it comes to bathrooms is a sterile sanctuary, stripped down to its essentials yet luxurious enough to draw you in for hours. Roca, the Barcelona-based bathroom outfitter that’s been at it for a hundred years, gets it, owns it and wants everybody to know it.
To that end the company has unlocked the secret to getting bums on seats: take what could be a run-of-the-mill showroom and elevate it into a gallery. After launching successful galleries in London, Lisbon, Spain and Shanghai, Roca has now opened its sixth in the Dongzhimen area of Beijing. And though it deviates dramatically from those spaces, it also remains spectacularly on message.
To design the 800 sq m interior Roca chose Ma Yansong, whose Beijing practice MAD specialises in organic, almost supernatural silhouettes that appear to pulsate with movement. Working within the strict confines of an existing building off congested Dongzhimen Outer Street, Yansong instead used light and projection to play with perceptions.
Taking advantage of full-height windows on two floors overlooking the busy pavement, he transformed the back wall into a giant LED screen, directing attention right through the building. The images on the screen, commissioned from art critic and curator Jérôme Sans, are eerily real: a mother bathing her baby, a man shaving his beard, a father tending to his young son, all tinkering with the latest Roca fixtures, seemingly oblivious to any spectators regardless of the constant flow of spectators on the street. It’s disarmingly alluring.
Yansong says he hopes the gallery ‘can become a positive, vivid corner of the urban community, connecting people and the city in the simplest way’. Elsewhere, projections of falling water that illuminate voids in the walls seek to calm them too.
It’s a deft bit of performance art amid the gallery’s backlit tile floors, stark pedestal displays and ominous black walls. It may not translate into concrete sales, but it advances the ideal of the contemporary bathroom that Roca has conceived immaculately.
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the MAD Architects website
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Based in London, Ellen Himelfarb travels widely for her reports on architecture and design. Her words appear in The Times, The Telegraph, The World of Interiors, and The Globe and Mail in her native Canada. She has worked with Wallpaper* since 2006.
-
Maude’s Brâncuși-inspired sex toys go on display in a new Paris exhibition
Maude’s design-led vibrators are now on display at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, as part of ‘Private Lives: From the Bedroom to Social Media’. Brand founder Éva Goicochea talks to Wallpaper* about partnering with the museum and opening up cultural conversations around sex
By India Birgitta Jarvis Published
-
‘I was captivated by the idea of merging two iconic brands’: Nigo on his 1990s-inspired collaboration with Moncler and Mercedes-Benz
Unveiled at Moncler’s ‘The City of Genius’ event in Shanghai this past weekend, Japanese fashion designer Nigo unpacks his three-way collaboration with Moncler and Mercedes-Benz, which includes a play on the G-Class alongside a fashion collection in his eclectic style
By Jack Moss Published
-
Cathay Pacific’s new business class Aria Suites take flight
Cathay Pacific raises the bar for business-class travel with the launch of the much-anticipated Aria Suites
By Lauren Ho Published
-
Cui Jie revisits past utopian architectures in her retro-futuristic cityscapes
Cui Jie responds to the ‘Cosmos Cinema’ theme of the Shanghai Biennale 2023
By Finn Blythe Published
-
‘A Show About Nothing’: group exhibition in Hangzhou celebrates emptiness
The inaugural exhibition at new Hangzhou cultural centre By Art Matters explores ‘nothingness’ through 30 local and international artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Ghislaine Leung, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Liu Guoqiang and Yoko Ono
By Yoko Choy Last updated
-
Cao Fei’s dystopian fantasies fuse art and technology
Chinese artist Cao Fei’s dystopian art tackles themes such as the automation of labour, hyper-capitalism and the effect of a global pandemic. Having just completed her first major solo show in Beijing, the prolific winner of the 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is going global, with her retro-futuristic take on contemporary life now the subject of exhibitions from Los Angeles to Rome, and a 20-page portfolio for Wallpaper*
By Daven Wu Last updated
-
Hong Kong through artists’ eyes
Hong Kong’s buzzing art and design scene, explored through the eyes of two creatives drawn to practise in the city
By Harriet Lloyd Smith Last updated
-
Hong Kong’s M+ Museum to open with six thematic shows
Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture will open on 12 November in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, with six themed shows spanning art, design and architecture
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Last updated
-
Architectural futurism and urban ‘nudity’: Liu Wei at White Cube
What is urban space without bodies? Chinese artist Liu Wei describes his eerie exploration of deserted cityscapes at White Cube Bermondsey
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Last updated
-
Ethereal minimalism infuses Shenzhen’s KennaXu Gallery
KennaXu Gallery, designed by Da Integrating, is a new Shenzhen contemporary art space created through the transformation of an old residential unit into a haven of ethereal minimalism
By Ellie Stathaki Last updated
-
David Adjaye and Adam Pendleton: a meeting of minds in Hong Kong
Paintings by American artist Adam Pendleton are staged in conversation with sculptural works by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye at Pace Hong Kong
By Hannah Silver Last updated