One of today's most famous creative minds and a versatile yet serious designer. The Frenchman has designed almost everything from café chairs to toothbrushes, from stools to prefabricated houses. However, one of his greatest successes is the Axor Starck collection, with which Hansgrohe caused quite a stir in 1994 – the first mixer with a joystick-like operating lever.
Axor Starck surprised the public with images that re-defined the bathroom as a 'Salon d'eau': a water room with none of the usual tiles. The designs incorporate a great deal of natural light, warm materials and a room composition that takes us 'back to our origins' while effusing uncompromising modernity.
In total, Philippe Starck has designed four collections for Axor, Hansgrohe AG's designer brand.
Axor Starck Classic and Axor Starck – the aesthetics of minimalism
Axor Starck focuses on the basics, on elementary forms. A clear function and a simple effect. There are no distractions. The result: a timeless bathroom collection that will never go out of fashion. Images are evoked of our past dealings with water. For example, the slanted spout resembles that of a water pump while the bath resembles an old-fashioned tub. The Axor Starck bathroom mixers are available with two different handle versions: a modern pin handle or, in the classic version, a spring handle.
Axor Starck X – maximum minimalism
Axor Starck X embodies minimal design and maximum enjoyment. The sculptural Axor Starck X collection plays with symmetry and clear geometric shapes: a round body and a square plate create an impressive outlet for the water. An upright joystick as a self-assured troublemaker. Straight lines with a commitment to the extraordinary.
Axor Starck ShowerCollection – personality squared
'Just mix it' is the motto of the Axor Starck ShowerCollection. The modular design can be used to transform the shower into a tailored-made spa. The simple, customisable system comprising shower heads, mixers and accessories gives us almost endless design freedom. Of course, the Axor Starck ShowerCollection is also the perfect shower complement for the Axor Starck and Axor Starck X collections.
Philippe Starck – the biography
Whenever we discover an object or a place designed by Philippe Starck, we enter a world of wall-to-wall imagination, surprises and fabulous fantasy. For more than three decades, this unique and multifarious creator, designer and architect has been a part of our daily lives by creating unconventional objects, whose purpose is to be "good" before being beautiful; iconic destinations, that take the members of his "cultural tribe" out of themselves and, most importantly, towards something better.
"I like to open the doors to people's brain."
Philippe Starck
His father, an inventor and aeronautic engineer, gave the young Philippe Starck the desire to create and the capacity to dream. Several years and several prototypes later, he was commissioned to work for President François Mitterrand. This was also when he began designing furniture for leading Italian and international firms.
Philippe Starck designs his hotels and restaurants in the same way a director makes a film. He develops scenarios that will lift people out of the everyday and into an imaginative and creative mental world. His hotels have become timeless icons and have added a new dimension to global cityscape. Through Philippe Starck’s concept of "democratic design" – increase the quality objects at lower prices so that more people can enjoy the best – he was a lone voice at a time when design was turned exclusively towards an elite. There are few areas of design he hasn't explored: from furniture to mail-order homes, motorbikes to mega-yachts, and even artistic direction for space-travel projects, to name but a few.
Pioneer of a “green” and democratic design
Philippe Starck believed in the green long before ecology became fashionable, out of respect for
the planet's future. Early on, he created the Good Goods catalogue of non-products for nonconsumers
in tomorrow's moral market, and set up his own organic food company. More recently he developed the revolutionary concept of "democratic ecology" by creating affordable wind turbines for the home, soon to be followed by solar-powered boats and hydrogen cars.
Philippe Starck is a tireless and rebellious citizen of the world who considers it his duty to share his ethical and subversive vision of a fairer world. He stays tuned in to our dreams, desires and needs - sometimes before we get there ourselves - by making his work a political and civic act which he accomplishes with love, poetry and humour.
