Top 2015 Design Trends | Bota Bota, spa-sur-l'eau

Design & Fashion

Top 2015 Design Trends

By Isa Tousignant

Thinking of refreshing your home this season? Take it from the pros: sometimes simplicity is the most powerful design mantra. Here’s a play-by-play guide to simple design by the geniuses at MU, the architects behind the new Bota Bota garden.

Charles Côté and Jean-Sébastien Herr don’t follow trends; they start them. The co-founders of MU are known for the refined simplicity of their designs. In addition to conceiving the brand new Bota Bota garden, they’ve signed industrial, commercial, and residential designs everywhere from Dubai to Nepal. Côté shares the firm’s very usable guide to MU’s top 2015 design details. Which ones will you take home?

1) FLOOR-TO-CEILING DOORS: “I’m currently redoing my own home, and I’m putting in full-length doors without frames. They’re on the same plane as the walls, without being recessed, so they have an amazing way of creating a sense of height and minimalism in the entire space.”

2) DOUBLE FAUCETS IN THE KITCHEN: “So many people put double sinks in their bathrooms, but I don’t really see the purpose of that. What I’m doing is double sinks – with two faucets – in the kitchen. It’s so practical, when one person wants to wash a dish while the other is rinsing vegetables.”

3) DIAGONAL PATTERNS: “We use a lot of wood at MU, on floors, walls, and ceilings, and what we like to do to create dynamism in the space is run the planks at a 45-degree angle, from corner to corner on the diagonal. It immediately animates the room.”

4) NATURAL TEXTURES: “We enjoy texture, and recently we’ve gone to a more ‘essential’ place with our designs, where we’ll play with the knots in wood and use them as a pattern. It’s a nice to way to nod at tradition but in a very contemporary and minimalist context.”

5) SLEEK LIGHTING SOLUTIONS: “At MU, we’re always looking to make the basic elements of our designs disappear so that our attention is captivated only by the statement pieces. In that vein, we like to hide the electric plaque of our ceiling lights behind the wall, so that all one sees in the slender line of the wire.”