Great design for a harmonious modern living
In the age of social media where every experience can be shared, style matters. Today, even our homes are both personal and social — and have become an important way to express ourselves. That’s why great design has never been more important, explains Sander Brouwer, Design Manager Global Brands, Global Consumer Design, at Whirlpool. This insight has guided the creation of Whirlpool’s new W Collection, a new suite of flagship appliances that has been designed for the most demanding modern lifestyles. Combining exceptional looks that you’ll want to show off with advanced technology that makes daily life effortless, the W Collection represents a world of smarter connected living and timeless style. We spoke with Sander Brouwer to understand how the W Collection has been defined around this aspirational vision of modern living.
Hi Sander — great to speak with you. Can you please explain why the new W Collection is such a significant launch for Whirlpool?
Absolutely. The W Collection is a suite of appliances that offers a truly premium experience that brings together advanced technology and leading edge design. Furthermore, these products are particularly exciting as they represent a new global design process for Whirlpool, with the creation of all appliances driven by a single philosophy and uncompromising vision of excellence, rather than as regionally-focused products that meet the selected needs of specific markets. Hence, the new W Collection forges an iconic visual identity, with the entire product suite created from the ground up around a common set of design principles.
Can you explain a little more about how the design process reflects lifestyle trends?
Our guiding principle at Whirlpool is to design products around our consumers’ needs, and this means answering both the practical everyday challenges and also fulfilling unconscious, aspirational desires. The W Collection is a range of products that is inspired by how we live today. As societies globally become more connected, more informed and more aware, we increasingly want to define and share our ideas and our style. Homes are no longer functional private spaces, but social environments that let people enjoy time with friends, partners and family. Just as the embrace of connectivity has encouraged us share more online, we also want our homes to be both personal and ready to share.
The W Collection has been created around this insight. By uniting really innovative technology with effortless ease of use and contemporary style — we want to make daily life stress free and more pleasurable. We also want to offer a modern experience that is liberating rather than overwhelming. Despite a wealth of performance and features, the appliances have been made to perfectly balance minimalist design with effective ergonomics, so the user is never confronted by technology so much as presented with clarity and harmony.
Is it a challenge to balance practicality with style?
In many ways the opposite is true — keeping the exterior design and the user interfaces elegant and appealing can make a product simpler and more satisfying to use. Visually, the new appliances have a pure appearance with clean, modern style, but this minimalist approach helps bring together visual and tactile elements and draw attention to features.
Design helps make function more apparent. For example, touch points are made more obvious by premium, subtly textured materials such as brushed stainless steel. Decisions like this help the products appeal equally to the eye as to the hand and help to make every interaction more intuitive and satisfying.
With kitchen appliances, is the aim to be distinctive or to blend in with the room?
This is an important point. We do want the products to be distinctive and stylish in their own right, but guide our design around the principle of ‘sensitive integration’. Wherever possible, surfaces are flat and flush to align crisply into even the most stylishly contemporary kitchen interiors for a more integrated and ‘curated’ look. Take the handle design, for example. On the W Collection appliances, we created handles that appear more like a refined piece of furniture than a kitchen appliance, fine and elegant and seamlessly integrating into the room.
What color trend do you see when looking at the kitchens of tomorrow?
Colors that create the connection between the living room and kitchen and blend in, will be the future for the appliances. As exhibited at EuroCucina 2018 with ‘The Jewel’ in the Whirlpool booth, we explored organic methods to apply finishes to our products. It took away the industrial look of the appliance and adopted finishes you can see in premium kitchens like marble, stone, bronze details and frosted surfaces.
The tailored or unique interiors of peoples’ homes will affect material developments of appliances in the near future.
Is it important that the very modern — almost futuristic — look helps to draw attention to the innovative technology offered by W Collection appliances?
These products are set apart by innovation — and their beauty really is more than skin deep! Whirlpool’s single-minded focus on the consumer also extends into reflecting the increasingly connected lifestyles that consumers lead. Every W Collection appliance is powered by advanced technology that ensures brilliant performance with minimal user effort. At the heart of this is Whirlpool’s advanced 6TH SENSE Technology, advanced sensor technologies that allow appliances to monitor and optimize their performance, for improved results and efficiency. In several products, assisted programs help fully remove the effort from making the correct choices when choosing the best settings or features to use. Elsewhere, intuitive and practical connected user experiences via Whirlpool’s pioneering 6TH SENSE Live App, seamlessly bring the world of household tasks into the digital realm in a way that’s just as intuitive and emotionally satisfying as the physical products themselves.
