Axor: Spanish Flair Meets Italian Grace

What Patricia Urquiola creates, others want to touch and own. This is the simplest, and most effective, way to describe this powerhouse in the modern world of design.

The entire world is currently in a mad dash to get their hands on her experimental creativity, with one of her design pieces sitting in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Patricia Urquiola.

Although born in Spain, Urquiola is Italian by choice, living in the design centre of the universe – Milan. Her very own Studio Urquiola is characterised by modernity with feminine accents and surprise elements. All of her designs tend to combine a minimalist approach with floral references, creating simplicity with a playful touch. She mixes styles, patterns and materials with sensuous extravagance to suit her taste, stimulating both curiosity and emotion from audiences around the world.

In 2011, Urquiola won the German Design Award, which is pretty much the top award in the country in that sphere. This was for her AXOR washbasin, featured in the AXOR Urquiola bathroom collection. Since then, Urquiola’s designs have featured in over 29 exhibitions around the world. She has also received a prestigious accolade from the Spanish King Juan Carlos I; who awarded her with The Order of Isabella the Catholic (Orden de Isabel la Católica) for her services to art!

Born in Oviedo, Spain, in 1961, Urquiola studied architecture in Madrid and graduated from the Polytechnic University of Milan; where she worked with Italian design legend Achille Castioglione. Her career kickstarted with luxury label De Padova, gaining over a decade of experience before opening her own design studio in Milan in 2001. Urquiola has worked in product and interior design, architecture and concept creation, and has brushed shoulders with some of the best in the furnishings and design industry.

To put it simply once again, Patricia Urquiola is a star.

AXOR develops, constructs and produces taps, showerheads and accessories for luxurious bathrooms and kitchens to perfection. At the highest aesthetic and technological levels, avantgarde, one-of-a-kind pieces and collections are created. Some of them are considered classics of bathroom design to this day.

Collectively they embody the claim “Form Follows Perfection”: not ending the developmental process until nothing more can be added or removed. Pace-setting design objects have been developed with this recipe for more than twenty years with world-renowned designers, among them Philippe Starck, Antonio Citterio, Jean-Marie Massaud and Patricia Urquiola. AXOR is a brand of the Hansgrohe Group.