LINDA C. LENTZ

Baths, showers, sinks, lighting, tiles, towel racks—it seems that every bathroom fixture has been reconsidered, reengineered, and remade in more glamorous forms by spa-dazzled designers. Every fixture, that is, except the most necessary one. Now, however, Kohler has conquered the final frontier of bathroom design with the Kohler Purist Hatbox toilet, a tankless model that […]

The Grand Canyon owes its existence to running water, to the rivers and streams that have, over the course of millennia, cut and revealed the rock walls’ layers. The KWC Canyon line of faucets is not as soul-stirring as this natural wonder, but it is remarkable nonetheless. It is the sophomore KWC effort of Bruno […]

Poggenpohl, a Herford, Germany, company that has been designing avant-garde kitchens for more than 100 years, does not cross the line with its latest innovation; it erases it. The +Integration (pronounced plus Integration) kitchen design, which debuted in the United States in May 2005, is ideal for people whose lives do not fit into tidy […]

A Ciottolo ceramic basin can elevate hand washing from mundane to sensual, although its design is based on earthly items. The line, which Sieger Design’s Michael Sieger created for Duravit, takes its name from the Italian word for “pebble.” It includes three different basin shapes—circular, oval, and teardrop—that are meant to evoke the outlines of […]

Like a habanero pepper, the Camacho Coyolar Puro delivers an intense flavor that will overwhelm delicate palates. All of our panelists savored the experience of tasting the cigar, but some doubted they ever could finish a Coyolar. For this blend, perhaps Camacho’s heaviest, the company ventured beyond its own tobacco farms in Honduras’ Jamastran Valley […]

The company that introduced the first built-in wall oven in 1955, the double-oven in 1956, and the black glass oven in 1965 now presents the Thermador Freedom Collection, a line of modular refrigeration components that are the kitchen design equivalent of Legos. “Refrigerators are the most limiting factors in kitchen design because they are big […]

French designer Philippe Starck describes his designs as an attempt to bring poetry and surprise to the otherwise mundane. If not poetic, his design of Duravit’s new headquarters and design center in the Black Forest town of Hornberg, Germany, is certainly surprising. The building’s facade, a mixture of glass and stainless steel panels, serves as […]

Amid a sea of minimalist, albeit stunning, European kitchens, Italian manufacturer Snaidero dares to be different. Almost a half-century of collaborations with architecture and design luminaries—including Gae Aulenti, Angelo Mangiarotti, Paolo Pininfarina, Massimo Iosa Ghini, and Roberto Lucci and Paolo Orlandini—has given the company a creative edge and produced a distinctive range of highly functional […]

When Ann Sacks founded her company in 1980, she was intent on displaying her tile in a manner that would stir the emotions of designers and their clients and compel them to have it installed in their homes. Sacks initiated this marketing plan in her own Portland, Ore., home, where she covered the walls, floors, […]

While omnipresent in homes throughout Europe, Electrolux, the Swedish brand responsible for the tank vacuum that was sold door-to-door to millions of American households following its introduction in 1924, has maintained a low profile on this side of the Atlantic in recent decades. However, AB Electrolux—now an appliance conglomerate that includes AEG in Germany, Frigidaire […]