How Vola reinvented the bathroom
Designing the future is a difficult job. Arguably few in recent times have done it as successfully – and repeatedly – as the late Danish architect and designer, Arne Jacobsen.
The cutlery he designed in 1957 for the SAS Royal Hotel was so ahead of its time that director Stanley Kubrick used it as a space-age prop in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey– more than a decade after the cutlery was released.
Less striking, but perhaps even more remarkable, is another humble piece of equipment Jacobsen came up with: the mixer tap known as KV1. Designed in 1968, not only is this piece of plumbing hardware still in production; it has become the foundation stone for one of Denmark’s most successful interiors companies, Vola.
“That design contains the simple geometry, the proportion, that is the DNA of Vola,” says designer Torben Madsen. “The cylinder, the circle; that is the heritage we build on.”
Vola’s products, defined by their clean lines, functionality and sense of proportion, are the first choice for prestige projects around the world. You will find them in the bathrooms of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Qatar’s National Museum and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Reichstag in Berlin and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, not to mention Cathay Pacific lounges and Mandarin Oriental hotels. Closer to home, White Rabbit Gallery founder Judith Neilson chose Vola tapware for her new Sydney residence, Indigo Slam.
Vola is one of a handful of Danish firms to have achieved this level of international success: others include Bang & Olufsen, Fritz Hansen, Stelton, Qvadrat and Montana. However, an appreciation for design seems to be embedded in the DNA of every Dane – even the criminally inclined. One Vola staffer tells me that when burglars broke into his house, they left his electronic gear and took his designer chairs instead. Apparently “designer theft” is not uncommon.
Pivotal collaboration
Vola founder Verner Overgaard possessed the typical Danish minimalist mindset. Having previously produced tapware for hospitals, Overgaard approached Arne Jacobsen with a revolutionary idea. He envisaged a mixer where all the mechanical parts were hidden, with only the spout and the handle being visible. The idea intrigued Jacobsen, and a successful partnership was born.
“It was a meeting of worlds,” says Birthe Tofting, Vola’s director of international sales, marketing and HR. “We had the factory, the skill in working with materials. Arne Jacobsen was very innovative, and we were able to make some of his wild dreams come true.”
Vola’s streamlined designs were an instant hit; by 1974, Vola was included in the design collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The company also helped changed the concept of what a bathroom might be.
“In the late 1960s, the bathroom was just a functional room,” Tofting says. “Overgaard’s idea was to clear up the mess, to make it an aesthetic space.” It’s a trend that has, if anything, only accelerated over time.
“Today, the plans of houses are very open,” Madsen says. “The bathroom has become a wellness space, the only place where you can retire and lock yourself away.”
From an early focus on tapware, Vola has progressively extended its range to include everything from shower heads to paper-towel holders. The need to “clean up the mess” continues to drive design: recent product launches include waste bins and soap dispensers that are mounted inside the wall.
“We only release one new product a year, and our new launches are largely responses to the feedback we get from our customers,” Tofting says. “We will look at anything that is missing from the bathroom, anything where we think, ‘We can do this much better’.”
The company’s best-selling products are works of art in their own right. Take the elegant 060, a circular showerhead with nozzles recessed behind a stainless steel plate, and the sculptural T39, a heated towel rack. Its rails are freestanding at one end, and the technical elements are buried within the wall. The T39 has become one of Vola’s most successful products, accounting for an astonishing 9 per cent of the company’s sales.
Like many Vola products, the T39 can be customised, with clients choosing the number of bars and the distance between them. “Flexibility is at the heart of what we do,” says Carsten Hartmann, Vola’s area sales manager, Asia-Pacific. “For one tap, we have 1.2 million order options.” That includes the lengths of individual components, as well as a choice of colours and materials. Vola products come in 15 different colours, but its most popular finishes are the seven different metal options, which include copper, natural brass and brushed stainless steel. “[Our designs] let the materials communicate; we let the stainless steel be the product,” says Torben Madsen.
Staying on home ground
Unlike many other manufacturers, the family-owned Vola company has resolutely refused to move its production plant offshore. “We turn the formula around: we produce in Denmark and sell in China,” says Hartmann. Two hundred people are employed at the sleekly designed headquarters in the small town of Horsens, where the factory works three shifts a day to maintain its extraordinary turnaround times.
“If we get the order on Monday, you will have the product on Friday,” says Hartmann. To make that possible, the company has invested heavily in smart machinery. On our factory tour, we stop to watch robotic arms polishing components. “Over the years [through mechanisation], we have reduced the time for the polishing process from 24 days to 28 minutes,” Hartmann says.
The company has been equally diligent when it comes to investing in its workforce. Workers are cross-trained so that they can tackle different jobs, and they are given a significant amount of autonomy. In the assembly area, for instance, the list of the jobs that need to be completed is posted at the start of the day. Individual workers select which tasks they want to work on from the list.
It is no wonder that employee turnover is low. “We have recently hired a lot of new employees, to keep up with demand, which has reduced our average length of tenure,” says factory director Peder Nygaard, slightly apologetically. “It’s now down to 10 years.”
One thing that you won’t find at Vola headquarters, surprisingly, is a design team. That is a deliberate choice. “Working with external designers means we are challenged all the time,” Birthe Tofting says. “If we used an insider who understands our production processes, there might be too many compromises. For an outsider, it’s not his problem how we produce it.”
Torben Madsen, the external designer who works with the Vola team, describes the design process as a battle. “We battle with the engineers, the sales people, the director of the factory,” he says happily. “The people at Vola are passionate about what they do, which makes them a good customer. They challenge me.”
Apart from the beauty of its designs, what sets Vola apart is its dedication to delivering products with a long lifespan. Rather than introducing fashion-driven ranges that date quickly, Vola’s designs aim to be timeless, and are built to last.
“If a chrome tap in an Asian hotel is cleaned 50 times a day, the chrome will get polished away; the brass will show through in three to four years,” says Hartmann. “We put three times as much chrome on our product, to extend that lifespan to 10 to 12 years.”
Vola guarantees customers that they will be able to get spare parts for their purchase for 30 years. Says Tofting, “If you make a product that’s going to last for 30 years, that’s the most sustainable product you can have.”
Always Arne
He is best known for his iconic Egg and Swan chairs, but Arne Jacobsen also left a considerable architectural legacy. Here are some highlights:
Aarhus Radhus Denmark's second-largest city is the proud possessor of a strikingly modernist town hall. The exterior is clad with cool grey marble; inside it's all warm wood, including the interiors of the elevators and the lobby benches. Highlights include the herringbone parquet floor made of aged oak retrieved from bogs, and the elegant spiral staircases.
Danmarks Nationalbank Its severe marble-clad exterior gives no clue as to what lies within this Copenhagen landmark. The cathedral-like lobby, with its soaring 20-metre ceiling, is flooded with light from narrow windows that are all but invisible from the outside. The sculptural steel staircase is breathtaking too.
Radisson Blu Royal Hotel When it opened in Copenhagen more than 50 years ago, this was the world's first "design hotel". Jacobsen devised every element, from the signage and door handles to the wine glasses and crockery.
Bellevue Beach On the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, Klampenborg is home to a clutch of Jacobsen projects, all arranged along the 700-metre Bellevue Beach. Among the most famous are the lifeguard towers and the Bellevue Theatre, with interiors clad in canvas and bamboo.
Skovshoved petrol station With its 80th anniversary around the corner, Jacobsen's petrol station north of Copenhagen has been listed as a historic monument. Its striking ellipse-shaped roof and white tiles continue to influence modern designers, notably at Copenhagen's Nørreport Station.
The writer travelled to Denmark as a guest of Vola.
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