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Marazzi. Under the Skin is an editorial project celebrating Marazzi’s 90th anniversary, where ceramics become a narrative material, capable of telling the story of spaces and the people who live in them.
In the volume Una Casa Immaginata — a fantasy villa conceived by British designer Charlotte Taylor — six rooms come to life, suspended between reality and vision, where Marazzi surfaces, colors, and textures create intimate and evocative atmospheres.
In this setting, seven authors and creative studios were invited to share their connection with a space in the home, weaving together personal memories, design reflections, and material inspirations.
For Marion Mailaender, the bathroom is the emotional heart of the home: a place of transformation, memory, and shared intimacy.
“I grew up in a house where the doors were always open and spent my childhood constantly running in and out of the bathroom, in typical Mediterranean fashion. I remember the scent of my grandmother’s perfume and asking if I could wear some too: it was Opium from Yves Saint Laurent. My siblings and I spent a lot of time there talking, shouting, dressing up, sharing makeup and checking each other’s looks. It was all so joyful.
That bathroom brings back many memories—great ones like getting ready for a wedding, and sad ones like getting ready for a funeral. It’s an important place, it’s where you prepare to go out into the world. Today I share these moments with my husband and my daughters. I think it’s important to be comfortable with each other’s bodies: to learn how your body looks when you are young and how it changes as you grow older, and to understand that the ‘perfect’ shapes we see in magazines don’t actually exist. When I lived in Paris, my bathroom was entirely covered in wood. It felt like being inside a boat. But the rest of the apart- ment—the bedrooms, the living room, and the kitchen—was entirely covered in tiles, like a swimming pool. It reminded me of Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro, with its blue mosaic tiled- floors: one of my favorite design references. I love working with tiles because they let you play with the symmetry, grids, sizes, patterns. It’s like designing in a video game.
Once, while I was in design school, I presented a utopian project called “the running bathroom”. It was a house in which the bathtub had a very, very long hose, so you could take it to your room or even place it in the kitchen, letting your kids play with water while you were cooking. I still think that rethinking the domestic space—changing the location and the purpose of every room—is a very interesting, modern concept. It’s also ecological in a way, because not being tied up to preconceptions means you can change and personalize your home as your life evolves.
Since moving to Marseille, I have a bigger bathroom than the one I had in Paris. It is actually very architectural, covered in white, 10x10cm tiles, in the style of Andrée Putman, a major influence for my work. It reminds me of a laboratoire yet at the same time it also feels like a living room, because the space is huge and you can sit, hang out, read stories around the bathtub. In my bathroom I also have paintings, photos, sculptures, a carpet and boxes, lots of boxes. I refuse to buy plastic ones, even though I know they would be a very practical and efficient way of organizing stuff. Instead, I get some ceramic boxes at the
flea market and use them to store all sorts of things: perfumes, matches, lighters.
I think having somewhere to sit in the bathroom is important: a bench, a little pouf or something like that. It’s frustrating when I’m in a hotel room and there’s nowhere to sit in order to get dressed, put some cream on or do my nails. In my next bathroom I’d actually love to have a sofa, like the one in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Right now, the only things you can choose for a bathroom are the tiles, the sink, the toilet… but I imagine a new type of bathroom, something more personal, more decorated, to be adorned with beautiful and sophisticated furniture, just as you would for a bedroom or a living room. I would like to have more ceramics with artwork on them, as well as beautiful carpets, because, let’s be honest, most rugs found in bathrooms are ugly. Also, lighting should be reconsidered: right now the only options are spotlights and wall lights. Yet when I read in my bathtub, I’d love to have a small lamp next to me.
The bathroom is my favorite room in the house and the only one with a view of the sea. If you visit, you will not find a large mirror in there. While brushing my teeth, I’d rather look at the sea than at myself” – Marion Mailaender
Contributo: Marion Mailaender
Immagini: Charlotte Taylor
Floor and wall coverings: Slow Pomice
Bath and Washbasin: Crogiolo Lume Musk
Marion Mailaender
Marion Mailaender grew up in Marseille. After training at the École Boulle, she set up her own interior architecture and design agency in Paris in 2004. Since then, she has designed both objects and scenography, collaborated with artists Sophie Calle, Amélie Pichard and Esteban Cortázar, and designed residential and hotel projects such as Tuba Club in Marseille and the Hôtel Rosalie in Paris.
