I'm at Coverings in Las Vegas

By the time you read this, I'll be on my way to Las Vegas to attend Coverings, the tile and stone show. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm being flown out there by the show itself and they've booked me a room in The Venetian. While I'm out there, I'll be getting an insider's look at all of the new stuff heading your way from the world of tile and stone. Count on many posts about the things I'll see at the show.

My posting schedule around here is going to be pretty sporadic until I get home to Florida on Thursday. They're running me into the ground the whole time I'll be in Las Vegas so I don't think I'll get a whole lot of blogging done. I will however, be posting a pretty constant stream of updates to Twitter if you're a Twitter-er-er. Follow me at @Paul_Anater and I'll see you around the end of the week.

I apologize to the world for my design crimes

Over the course of my career as an active kitchen and bath designer, I designed more master baths that looked like this than I care to admit. I always hated these cookie-cutter exercises in more is more, but clients wanted them and they were happy with the finished projects. No harm done, right?

Wrong. A little part of me died every time I set out to design one of these things. Look at it. It's utterly devoid of character or personality. It's as if it were designed for a future listing agent instead being designed for the person who paid for it and uses it every day. In fact, it was designed for a resale might happen in some time in the future. How is that any way to live or to make your house a home?

It's beyond ironic that as the sun was setting on my career as a retail designer, I ended up at two major trade shows in Europe that showed me another way to look at bath design. Another show over there I'd love to see  starts this week in Frankfurt. That show is ISH and it's the holy of holies of the bath world.

In advance of ISH, German manufacturer Duravit released the Onto series by designer Matteo Thun. Onto is everything the bath above is not.

Duravit's Onto is beautifully designed and unique. It's made to last and it thumbs its nose at that future listing agent. It has a few other things going for it that aren't so apparent. It uses fewer resources, look great in a smaller room and it provides adequate storage. I'm calling it adequate storage for a reason.

I used to think that the world's ills could be solved by providing people with more storage. But the more I think about it the more that I see that providing more storage only encourages people to fill that storage with more stuff. Now I think the answer isn't to find more storage, it's to accumulate less crap. Adequate storage means enough space to put away a reasonable amount of stuff. Keep it coming Duravit.

The Last Breakfast

Freelance sculptor and and illustrator Brian Stuckey is brilliant.

Nothing short of brilliant. Here's his website.

Details:

It's a Google, global science fair

Google, in collaboration with Lego, National Geographic, Scientific American and CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is calling for entries for the world's first, global science fair.

The Google Global Science Fair is open to students aged 13 through 18. Kids can enter on their own or in teams of two or three and the deadline for entries is April 4th.

The prizes are incredible and feature real, meaningful scholarships as well as hands-on, educational trips to the Galapagos and CERN.

You can learn about the Google Global Science Fair on its dedicated website. If you have a budding scientist in your life, please encourage him or her to enter this science fair. If your budding scientist isn't interested in the contest, encourage that young Marie Curie or young Albert Einstein to keep doing what they're doing.

The solutions to the world's myriad problems are in the minds of scientifically-inclined young people. Those young minds need all of the support and encouragement they can get. There was a time in the United States when investing in science education and science research was a civic virtue. Now it seems that the very expression civic virtue is passé.

I hope that something like the Google Global Science Fair can begin to change that. As the end title of this video says, Science connects the world.

More cool bath ideas from Spain

The Spanish tile industry is better described as the Spanish ceramics industry. Many of the major Spanish tile producers also make sinks, toilets, bathtubs and vanity counters.

While I was in Spain with Tile of Spain last month, I had the chance to see some bath designs from Tau Cerámica. I think they're noteworthy for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they integrate tile onto cabinet doors and counters. Here's what I'm talking about.

That vanity is faced in white tile. But it gets even more interesting if you look at it more closely.

The accent tile on the wall is called Point. Tau recreated Point's pattern on a laminate and used the laminate for accents on the vanity cabinet. It's subtle and pretty clever effect.

Here's another one that integrates the wall tile onto the vanity itself.

I love how graphic this last one is. Again, it's playing off the tile on the wall by integrated that tile onto itself.

I'm also growing obsessed with the idea of vitreous china vanity tops that have integrated sinks. Talk about easy to clean.

I'll see Tau and a couple of hundred other tile manufacturers next week in Las Vegas for Coverings. I'll be reporting about the things I see there, you can count on it. In the meantime, take a look at Tau's website where you can look through their catalogs and find out where you can buy their products. In addition to their website, Tau keeps up a pretty lively presence on Facebook. Go like them. If that weren't enough, Tau also has a large number of photographs they've uploaded to Flickr. Give them a look.

My trip to Spain with Tile of Spain impacted me pretty profoundly. Being in Spain was incredible enough but I notice that since I've been back I'm having an increasingly difficult time seeing the virtue of American-style bath design. I'll get over it eventually, but I sort of hope I don't.