Hair mats and soap sinks rethink the bathroom in Berlin show
A bath mat made from human hair and a washbasin that melts away every time you use it are on show in Berlin.
They are part of Behind Closed Doors: The Culture of Circularity, an exhibition by Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands and bathroom company Kaldewei at the Berlin design festival Currents, according to Dezeen.
The show brings together eight projects from a 10-week partnership between Kaldewei and students on the academy's Social Design master's degree, a course focused on design for society. The brief was simple. Rethink the future of the bathroom.
Hair runs through several of the answers. Sarah Kinzer and Moss A Moschen pressed real strands of their own hair into steel tiles. Carlotta Talkenberger went further and wove loose human hair into a bath mat, treating a material most bathrooms wash down the drain as a fibre to build with.
Other students started with water and waste. Ian Chu made a washbasin entirely from soap. It disappears a little with every wash. Guadalupe Vanini Cervini built sculptures from fallen reeds, using plants gathered rather than farmed or manufactured.
The exhibition runs from 9 to 18 September 2026 at the KALDEWEI Brand Space, the academy said in a post about the opening. Kaldewei's head of design is Christian Büttner.
What makes this stand out is the setting. Bathrooms are rooms built for flushing things away. These students ask what happens if you keep the material instead.
