For the first time after many years of collaboration with a single design studio, Kos has begun new international partnerships to answer current lifestyle needs, effectively interpreting the brand’s new orientation.
Kos collections suggest the idea of complete well-being, a dimension without clear boundaries that flows between indoors and outdoors, since ever. This is combined with a constant study and experimentation of materials: solid surface, acrylics, and natural woods create soft sculptural shapes in various product collections.
Today, the brand’s heritage - associated right from the start with all that is desirable and meant for impressive home wellness, hospitality and outdoor projects - is joined by a new attitude towards contemporary dwelling and spaces, needs and aspirations. This new phase for the Kos brand sees the development of two original projects.
Beam, signed by the US-based studio Visibility, curiously combines archetypes of product design and architecture, in a contemporary idiom redefining the idea of the bathroom. The collection includes a countertop basin made of Biobased Cristalplant®, available in three different colours (in addition to the classic white, the warm new finishes terracotta and dove grey), with a container shelf, in natural wood, available in two sizes and two colours.
“Beam is a collection that aims to complete domestic environments to give personality and style to an object that will become part of people’s everyday life” say Joseph Guerra and Sina Sohrab, soul of Visibility, a studio known for the ability and originality it brings to forming objects for ordinary everyday living, including items for the kitchen and bathroom.
In the design of the washbasin, Visibility evokes the image of a bowl or basin: ancestors of today’s washbasins recalling simple acts associated with nourishment and self-care, inspiring Beam’s simple, familiar shape. The basin is characterized by the presence of an internal ledge, meant to give more space to accessories or taps, with a functional and empathic language.
The wash basin is combined with a solid ash shelf. The design of this object is a direct reference to the steel I-beam, a key modular element in architecture, the dimensions of which vary according to its use.
The geometry of the Beam shelf is designed to be perfect for the items typically used in the bathroom, in a functional scheme with an attractive, playful look and an incredible sense of proportion.
In the Rise basin collection, designed by the Italian studio Zaven, the idea started by visualizing a flat element that crosses through a cylindrical volume, attempting to obtain the greatest possible number of results with a simple intersection of parts. The intersection of forms characterizes the style and research of Zaven; their idiom, as Enrica Cavarzan e Marco Zavagno tell “it must be coherent but also in continuous evolution, following the fascination for simple geometric shapes, volumes and very graphic signs, looking for the way to make them coexist and interpenetrate to give life to new forms”.
In the Rise collection, the matrix is a rectangular deck integrating the basin, made of Cristalplant® Biobased, available in oval and round versions. A few simple cuts of this basic element make it possible to obtain distinctive designs and formal expressions, permitting its use in a variety of situations: as a single counter with a built-in basin, combined with a metal console; as a semi-recessed or countertop basin.
In the console and semi-recessed versions, the basin seems to emerge out of the counter, as if floating on top of it, evoking the gentle motion of water and creating pleasing ergonomics. While in the sit-on version, the memory of the countertop is preserved in the decorative moulding.
The Rise collection is a synthesis of bold formal research with strategic industrial design aimed at optimising the production process while also permitting custom-made solutions.
