Stylish Lounging Bath Tub
One of the ongoing challenges of tall folks is a tub that will accommodate more than 1/3 of our length at any given time. Add the original, good looks of Studio Thol’s design, and you might just have a solution.
This project is a continuation of one of my graduation projects at the Design Academy Eindhoven, wherefore I have done research into the use and properties of fibre reinforced plastics. The frame is laminated from strips of 3mm thick (American White) oak, bent over a mould.
The tub is made of a polyester, marble composite.
I have evolved the wooden frame of a chair into a bathtub, because the ergonomics of a chair are completely focused on the human body.
Bathtubs are generally made of fibre reinforced plastics. These are plastic materials that harden through a chemical process. When you see the finished product you don’t see it was fluid once, it looks like they have always been hard. It raises no question, it’s just there and you feel no emotion. I have made a bathtub in which the wooden frame is also the mould of the tub.
The frame is the form I have made, it provides the pattern in which the tub is allowed to form itself. After that I covered the frame with fibreglass matting and filled it up with water. The weight of the water creates the tension in the material. By lubricating the fibreglass with a marble composite it hardens out. You see and feel the pressure of the water because of the tension in the tub, and the wooden frame is visible from inside of the tub as your can see bones through skin.
