Tura Collection by Andreu Carulla

Andreu Carulla started his design studio in 2006 from his house in the Spanish countryside, between Barcelona and the French border. He has steadily grown his practice over the past two-decades, expanding from product design into architecture, interiors and recently, a bathroom collection for Roca. Titled ‘Tura’, for the tura in the Spanish word: architectura, the collection not only reflects Carulla’s underlying interest in craft, architecture and form, but also his more conceptual approach to projects, building a narrative that connects to place and time, always with a mission of being more sustainable or purpose-driven.

Across his multifaceted design practice, Carulla seamlessly establishes connections between materials, the user and the setting. “Our approach is not the typical interior design approach. We are thinking in concepts,” he explains. Collaborating with the Michelin-starred Roca brothers in Girona for their restaurant, Normal (2022), Carulla designed every last detail of the interiors from the plates to the seating, working with local craftspeople including ceramics, wood and weaving. For Tramo (2023), a zero-waste restaurant in Madrid where the interiors are all made from repurposed and upcycled materials, one feature included the tubes of the AC and heating systems – all of which is powered by solar panels ­– running through the benches so that the seats warm and cool accordingly. In a collaboration with OMA for Air CCCC, they reused the Balau wood that was used in a temporary installation by Kengo Kuma during the 2022 Singapore Design Week, and the Styrofoam containers used by the street food vendors, transforming them into a unique furniture collection.

In this same spirit, the Tura collection goes beyond being ‘just another bathroom collection’. Rather, it represents a deeper engagement with design and sustainability in one of the world’s largest and most commercial industries. Carulla was approached by Marc Viardot, Roca Group’s Marketing and Design Director, to collaborate on a collection for Roca, or rather, as Carulla notes, “he challenged – and I say a challenge – because it is a challenge for a designer to do something new or singular in a sector that has a lot of restrictions and that has to be commercial and functional.” When it comes to the bathroom, it is an obvious fact that there is not much interest in ‘experimental furniture’ or even concepts. Things need to work and they need to work right, otherwise it will fail.

Working with Roca’s in-house design team, Carulla brought in non-traditional references into a bathroom collection, such as the forms and lines of Catalan modernist architecture as well as traditional Spanish shutters, and transformed that into a collection that is both commercially appealing and viable to produce on a large scale. One of the standout aspects of this collection is the subtle approach to weaving in materials that are not typically found in the bathroom, including sustainable materials such the Spanish cork tops and trays and the recycled felt baskets in the accessories collection of Tura. These essential pieces add warmth and softness into a space as well. Another touch was having the furniture collection be available in terracotta, in addition to light noble grey and off-white, a popular colour outdoors perhaps, but in a bathroom collection, it was pushing new territory.

“We are very conscious of the moment we are living. We try to produce locally and we are very aware about the waste and energy usage that goes into every project. We feel very responsible with all of those details that a designer has a voice in…in the end we have to be the advisors of our clients – we have to push them or try to do things in another way and this is possible when you are doing this without extra cost – so this is often our challenge.”

“Tura was a very strategic project”, Carulla explains. “This was not just an artistic project. Everything was taken with lots of thought and conversation.” He understands that the collection won’t sit singularly in a space but be featured in between numerous other collections in a catalogue. But, yet, thanks to Viardot and the Roca design team’s openness with letting him push forward new ideas, Tura’s significance goes beyond its aesthetic and functional appeal in the bathroom. It opens new doors to bringing in other design approaches to a commercial sector and puts forward the challenge to keep developing thoughtful approaches to this most intimate and personal of spaces.

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