When gazing out at an elephant herd gathered on the horizon line of a vast landscape, there is something reassuring about the way they stand resolutely connected to the earth — almost as though they are holding it down, keeping it in place. This is the comforting feeling encapsulated in TEMBO, a moniker translated from the Swahili word for ‘elephant’. The designs pay tribute to the soft power, protective nature and delight that elephants conjure.
The collaboration sees material innovation and craft shake hands with architectural, narrative-led design. A 25-year-old Australian brand internationally renowned for its handcrafted approach to bathrooms, apaiser appealed to YOO Studio’s place-making design eye, catalysing YOO Studio’s first product collaboration. YOO Studio is a collective of developers and designers with a creative lens attuned to sustainable and community-focused design.
Winning the NYCxDESIGN award for bath fixtures this year, TEMBO’s creative direction considers how form and design can enhance function. Where a bathroom is concerned, design has the capacity to instil peace by turning habits into rituals that, imbued with a new sentiment, contribute to health and lifestyle. In this way, apaiser recognises an increasing tendency, in an overwhelmingly noisy and hyper-connected world, for the bathroom to function as a restorative necessity.
Belinda Try, apaiser founder and president, explains, “Partnering with YOO Studio London on the TEMBO collection, has been a powerful creative exchange, uniting apaiser’s sculptural DNA with YOO’s bold, global design vision. The result is a collection grounded in spatial sculpture and projecting calm authority.”
The TEMBO collection features two freestanding bathtubs, three basins and a bathroom stool. “We approached the collection as an extension of the space,” says Claire Rizzi, YOO Studio London Design Director. “Each piece is designed to anchor a room – balancing sculptural presence with a quiet sense of restraint.”
The TEMBO bath stretches its monolithic form over a slightly indented base that casts a gentle shadow that uplifts its mass, while still allowing it to form a weighted centrepiece in the space. The TEMBO round and circular countertop basins mimic its refined design and cutaway base. The freestanding basin celebrates simple act of washing one’s hands by defining the moment at its throne-like, rounded pedestal.
The TEMBO Two bathtub’s carved, anchored base takes the shape of two sturdy legs that are more literally reminiscent of an elephant’s large footprint and sturdy connection to the ground. Its organic, bold curves embrace, in the way an elephant’s from holds strong presence, informing the space joyfully without overwhelming it. The bath stool, as though the offspring of the larger bathtub, echoes the shape of TEMBO Two’s legs. The rounded columns are fused together as a trio below a curved, flattened tabletop.
As a collection, TEMBO speaks to balanced, embracing and refined design by combining a sense of mass with softer organic lines. Despite the distinctive presence of the pieces and the way each is capable of holding its own in space, the designs lend themselves to complementing diverse interior visions. A palette of eighteen hues, focusing on raw graphite, taupes, textural, snowy and grained whites, underscores the earthy, natural aesthetic within the resolved shapes. Tactility emphasised, smooth and soothing on the skin, the collection is sculpted from apaiserMarble, a proprietary material developed sustainably from reclaimed marble. Each piece is crafted by the expert hands of artisans in apaiser’s atelier.
By prioritising shape and materiality that ground a space, the TEMBO collection acts like an elegant safeguard, absorbing the external din and internal voices, dissipating them to create one of the rare environments left where we can regularly disconnect and take peaceful repose.