MAD make the walls come alive in this Beijing bathroom
The Chinese architects rethink art bathroom conventions setting LEDs into the walls of Roca Beijing
Shopping for baths, taps and sinks is rarely a highly cultured activity. However, visitors to MAD Architects new Roca showroom, or the Roca Beijing Gallery, as the firm prefers to style it, in the Dongzhimen district of the capital, will offer a little more refinement and interaction in its display space.
The development, created for the Spanish bath firm in conjunction with the renowned French gallerist Jérôme Sans – best-known for co-founding Paris’s Palais de Tokyo gallery – has LED screens set into its inner walls, creating an immersive visual experience.
Rather than screen simple video works, the walls in Roca Beijing will be used to show simulated depictions of people using the showroom, shaving and showering in among the sanitary fittings, or mimicing different weather conditions such as rain, sunshine, or smog – a controversial meteorological phenomena in this polluted city.
Adding additional screens within an already heavily mediated urban environment might seem like overkill, yet Ma Yansong, MAD Architect’s founding principal, hopes these LEDs will actually draw Beijing’s citizens away from their phone screens and into a closer interaction with one another.
“I hope that the Roca Beijing Gallery can become a positive, vivid corner of the urban community, connecting people and the city in the simplest way,” says Ma Yansong, MAD Architect’s founding principal. For more on MAD’s work order a copy of MAD Works here.