ROCA GROUP SPACE | VOX Architects

ROCA GROUP is one of today’s world leaders in the production of a full range of bathroom products: sanitary ceramics, mixer taps, bathroom furniture and accessories, floor and wall ceramic tiles for architectural, construction projects and interior design, as well as the world's only manufacturer of all types of baths: cast iron, steel, acrylic. ROCA GROUP is represented in 170 countries and has 85 factories with 24,000 employees. In 2019, its turnover amounted EUR 1.86 billion.

This family group of companies is the market leader in Europe, Latin America, India and Russia. It also is in a good position in China and other Asian countries, the Middle East, Australia and Africa. All this makes the company a world leader in its business sphere.

In Russia, ROCA GROUP is represented with the brands Roca, ARMANI/Roca, LAUFEN, Jika, AQUATON, Santek, Santeri; it has 7 factories with 3,000 employees.

ROCA GROUP Space in Moscow is where you embark on a journey to the philosophy of the world leader in the manufacturing of innovative products and solutions for bathrooms, known for its investments in high-class design, commitment to the principles of sustainable development in design and focus on water resources preservation. The company's Moscow office invited VOX Architects to design a multifunctional space where a showroom, a hall for business and cultural events, training classes for both professional designers and architects and those who just start their careers mutually enhance each other. Here one can not only see the ROCA GROUP brands’ bestsellers and new products, but also soak up the atmosphere of creativity and daring ideas on each level: the sensory, tactile and spatial.

Organization of space

The imagery associated with the water element — purity, clarity, transparency, fluidity —manifests itself in the layout, in the selected materials and the monochrome palette.
The exhibition area is designed as a pure graphic modular construction, as open and flexible as possible. Its extremely adaptive and theatrical, which allows to play with the space and change it depending on current tasks, constantly completing it. Transparent partitions of allocated rooms are easy to curtain off and open again. The surfaces of self-leveling floors and stemalite panels covered with a mirror film reflect each other, revealing the depth of ROCA GROUP Space with floating futuristic snow-white objects.
"Digital" water can also be emphasized with physical art objects embedded in an architectural project: if needed, a metal "wave" can be launched over two atriums, while teardrop-shaped objects made of polymer fabric filled with water can be gathered over the entrance area.

At the entrance, visitors see a reception desk with an illuminated art installation of sanitary ceramics fragments and a wave on a large screen, alluding, among other things, to the famous "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp, who showed that even a mundane object can be appreciated for the very beauty of its form, as a pure image. But in the first place, the installation refers to the innovative developments of the company, its research for the best solution.

Communication flows in ROCA GROUP Space lead from meetings and communication in the guest and exhibition areas to the exchange of experience with a professional audience in study rooms, adjacent to the meeting room. Techniques of fixing plumbing products are demonstrated here at an open stand, it’s also the place for master classes with designers, architects, technical specialists, where they share secrets and details of the manufacturing process. Thus, ROCA GROUP Space expands the idea of a showroom as a multifunctional space as always open for a dialogue. It allows you reach a new level of brand communication with the audience, helping outline a modern understanding of the culture of bathrooms, conscious water consumption and sustainable development, as well as to find new solutions and ideas that improve each person’s life quality.

Design idea

Two exhibition brand-platforms — ROCA and LAUFEN — are united by means of an interactive video installation dedicated to water in its multiple forms and manifestations. The manufacturers and the world design stars cooperating with them, from Marcel Wanders to Patricia Urquiola, pay special attention to the culture of water consumption not only when they design new items. ROCA GROUP also takes care of water resources within the non-profit project "We Are Water", created by the company to solve water shortage and sanitation related problems in the most disadvantaged areas of the planet.

The water theme, essential for the ROCA GROUP design solutions, runs through all the functional zones designed here on an area of 700m². The water flows in a free, powerful, changing flow, bubbles, sways, pours in a 46-meter-long video sequence on LCD screens mounted on dark perforated Fundermax HPL panels, which are lined with the walls of the exhibition space. These media screens are also used as a visual media at various events for showing films and video materials of the company, as well as digital exhibitions and design competitions. This digital wave encircles the hall for lectures, presentations and meetings with transparent Frilly chairs from Kartell, as well as rooms with thematic expositions that demonstrate the iconic LAUFEN Alessi sinks, Kartell by LAUFEN color accessories, the smart toilet-bidet Cleanet Riva, the premium collection LAUFEN The New Classic by Marcel Wanders and the elegant Sonar by Patricia Urquiola. In the Roca room, the digital water "washes" the zones of the vintage Carmen line, the modern Beyond and Ohtake ones, smoothly "flowing" into the space of Roca and ARMANI/Roca mixer taps and shower solutions. Another informational stream of the Roca logo flows from the ceiling in the virtual shower room, reflecting in the floor and ceiling.