Mastella Bathroom Design
13 March 2009
“Less Is More… Difficult”
I didn’t really meant to spend quite as much time with bathroom design as I did this week, but I tend to run off in tangents, and since I found so much that was of interest to me, I just couldn’t think of a reason to stop writing about what I’d found. But since I stayed in that vein, I thought I would end the week that way, and end it, this time, with a bathroom design that is altogether different.
And do so by posing a paradox of a paradox. More is more. We all know that. What does that mean, exactly? More of the same. “Please, sir, I’d like some more.” So, that is how we have interpreted that for as long as the language has been in existence, I suppose.
Then a few years ago, people began to urge simplification. Think back to the rococo style of furniture and such. Then there was a backlash movement, and designers thought in terms of doing less, like the Shakers had done. And so it was with Stickley and Greene and Greene. A little less.
And what did we do then? Well, we began to tout the virtues of this, and we did it with a superlative. Even though it was less ornate and less complex, we said that it was actually more. Less is more. And sometimes it is, when you think about it, more appealing to the senses, more easy to clean (if you don’t mind my butchering the language for a moment!), and so forth.
And now, I am here to tell you that sometimes less is more difficult than more. Look at the vanity from Mastella in the bathroom design that tops this page. It is nothing more than a simple line. A child could have drawn it. Maybe. But who among us could take that one simple line and make of it something functional and also something that is stunning in its beauty, because of its utter simplicity—a single line.
Finally, I have included this larger picture which puts the double sink in the context of a bathroom that, although still laid out with the simplest of lines, is somehow sumptuous beyond all hearing of it. I included this picture because when you look at the pictures of the other sinks and vanities and see how small they are, they seem to have little function, unless you want to use them for a guest bathroom. But then I saw this picture, and my first response was, “Wow, I never thought of that.” And that is the entire point of design sometimes, doing the unexpected, and especially so when it can be made to function in new and unusual ways.
Joseph
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