April 10, 2017

Duravit Looks Back on 200 Years of K&B Innovation

Duravit was founded in 1817.

Bicentennial fever is gripping Duravit, founded in 1817 as a ceramic tableware supplier by Georg Friedrich Horn, but now a global bath giant approaching half a billion dollars in annual sales. “What drives us is the search for perfection, in aesthetics as well as functionality,” chairman Frank Richter says.
 

Sieger Design’s Giamo triggered a rage for collaboration in 1987.

That pursuit accelerated in 1987 with Sieger Design’s Giamo, the manufacturer’s first complete bath range, which triggered a rage for collaboration. Sieger’s Darling sink followed in 1994, the same year Interior Design Hall of Fame member Philippe Starck’s Starck 1 bathtub became an industry sensation. Studio KMJ’s very rectangular Vero bowed in 2001. This year, Danish designer Cecilie Manz joins the roster with the pared-down elegance of the Luv series, its no-nonsense tub seamlessly cast from a proprietary mineral composite. And just in time for the anniversary, Duravit’s U.S. subsidiary christened its new 120,000-square-foot Georgia headquarters last month.

> See more from the March 2017 issue of Interior Design
 

The Darling sink debuted in 1994.
 
The Starck 1 bathtub became an industry sensation that same year.
 
Studio KMJ’s rectangular Vero debuted in 2001.
 
This year, Cecilie Manz contributed a tub to the Luv series.
 
Giamo was Duravit’s first complete bath range.

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