Interview: Peter Wirz on design and the launch of Laufen's new PRO X collection

As Laufen launches the latest generation of its bestselling PRO collection, designer Peter Wirz talks to Nicola Hanley about why his longstanding collaboration with the Swiss brand has proved so successful.

When Swiss industrial designer Peter Wirz first started working in the profession – he was previously a middle-distance runner who competed in the Olympic Games and was named European Champion in 1984 – there was a question that he kept coming back to: What does it mean to design something that actually serves people?

It was a question he put to Swiss bathroom manufacturer Laufen in 1998 when their collaboration first began. “Together with the LAUFEN team we asked ourselves what design could really do for sanitary professionals and planners, as well for end users of all ages.”

Those early questions laid the foundations for the relationship Wirz has built with Laufen – and other longstanding clients – over the last 25 years or so. “It means being more of a mandate-driven, rather than a project-driven business, which is why we’ve tried to reduce the amount of customers we [Vetica Group, the design and branding agency that he founded] work with over the years. I’m not interested in jumping from one project to another just to create something that will sell for a few years and then be gone. That’s not what I would call sustainable in terms of design or business.” 

The PRO range, which Wirz designed for Laufen over 20 years ago, remains a strong seller and epitomises his approach to creating products that endure. In 2013 he revisited the bestselling collection to create PRO S, a range with clearer and more slender forms, and it too is still on the market. “That is something that makes me very happy,” says Wirz.

“PRO X had to take this legacy to the next level. To create a redesign is much more delicate and the responsibility is much higher than if you’re creating something completely new, especially when you’re working on a cash cow. To just give it the name PRO doesn’t mean it will automatically be successful. So we had to think about what the new generation will look like and what kind of elements we can bring to it.”

Wirz believes there are just 2 main measures that are important to bathroom design. The first is the replacement cycle of a bathroom, which he puts at around 22-26 years. “In the same way as when you get married, you need to make your selection carefully because it will have an impact on your life for many years. Fancy colours and shapes or trendy things will not make you happy over time. Bathroom design should be timeless in terms of shapes and ceramics and faucets and so on.”

The second measure is the size of the bathroom, which is particularly important to the UK market. “The UK has the smallest usable space for bathrooms. I have no idea why architects take it as a functional room and not something that you might combine with the bedroom. There needs to be a massive change in architecture and interior design,” he says.

Wirz and his team looked at the parameters of all Laufen’s different markets and recognised the need for compact solutions and more storage room. “We needed to have affordable furniture and less water consumption possibilities. From the waterfall set to the Silent Flush 2.0 concept, which is on its 2nd generation, all of this goes in to optimising the original heritage of the PRO legacy.”

Advancements in technology provided fresh opportunities and Wirz and his team spent a week visiting Laufen’s production sites to see the limitations as well the possibilities. “Automation and precision in production are gifts for designers and provide endless opportunities and that’s what happened with Laufen and their electric kiln, [which they installed in 2023]. It can be controlled much more precisely than a gas kiln and you have almost no failed parts. You can make straighter lines, thinner walls and smaller radiuses and optimise the material in terms of weight and the amount of material use. So we took these advantages and these opportunities and worked our way to the new shape to evolve the PRO collection with PRO X.”

The result is a clearer, more minimalistic, versatile and refined range that remains timeless and accessible. Pieces can be mixed and matched with products from the PRO and PRO S collections so items can be seamlessly replaced without the whole bathroom needing to be renovated thanks to their shared design language. “We believe this mix and match concept is the most effective, sustainable way of creating products that have a long lifecycle,” Wirz says. PRO X basins were also developed alongside Laufen’s Base 2.0 and Juna furniture and pair perfectly with it to create vanity units in a wide range of colours.

For Wirz, the collaborative nature of his partnership with Laufen is what has helped the relationship thrive over the last couple of decades. “I wouldn’t say we’ve been successful because we always knew what was going to happen,” he says. “You need to have a good team, from the customer and our side, and you need to be able to collaborate intensely because design is a team sport where everyone has their role and strengths.”

There is, he says, an element of luck to having the right teams and a customer who is prepared to trust a designer and give them the freedom to create. “We all know trust is something you cannot buy. It needs to be developed over the years. And that’s what we did. We’ve always had an 'open book' relationship.”

As well as trust, Wirz says his relationship with Laufen is also based on honesty and professional hard work. “And that comes very close to what design should be all about.”