Pictures Copyright: ©Ruy Teixeira | Roca
The story of the Ohtake Collection for Roca begins long before a washbasin. It begins with Ruy Ohtake, the Brazilian architect whose career of more than 400 buildings made him synonymous with daring curves and sensorial architecture. Ruy believed design should awaken the senses, offering unpredictability and emotion even in everyday encounters. When Roca invited him to design a collection, he turned to the simplest inspiration: the egg. Its fragile yet resilient shell led to ultra-thin ceramic basins that won the Red Dot Award in 2019, celebrated for uniting technology, function, and beauty.
©Ruy Teixeira | Roca
When Ruy passed in 2021, the question of succession became unavoidable. Rodrigo, his son, had grown up with what he jokingly calls “cereal made of concrete.” Sundays were spent at his grandmother Tomie’s house — herself a pioneering artist — surrounded by architects, critics, filmmakers, and designers. Architecture, he says, wasn’t imposed on him; it was inevitable. After 15 years working in his father’s studio, he launched his own practice to create independently. Then came the inheritance — not just of a firm, but of a name deeply tied to Brazilian culture. “It starts from Tomie, not only from my father. Every painting, every brick, was a contribution to culture. Continuing that legacy is hard work.”
Yet Rodrigo insists design is never only about form. São Paulo, his home city, confronts him with scarcity — of public space, of greenery, of equality. “We have to keep trying to make people’s lives better,” he says. That conviction drives a 21-year partnership with a favela community, where his office has built five schools pro bono. “Architects are agents for a better society,” he explains. “But we don’t arrive pretending to know. The community leads, we listen, and that’s why the projects still thrive ten years later.”
©Ruy Teixeira | Roca
When Roca returned, asking him to extend the collection, Rodrigo faced a moment of unpredictability worthy of his father. He had five days. Instead of drawings, he reached for his children’s modeling clay. Within those days, he produced five basin maquettes and an unsolicited bathtub. “I think it’s up to the architect to give more than what the client asks,” he says. Roca embraced the models, and three years later, the expanded collection launched to international acclaim, earning Rodrigo both the Red Dot Design Award and the iF Design Award for his vision for the Ohtake Collection for Roca. His basins soften his father’s dramatic curves, opening them like the petals of a calla lily. A new terracotta finish nods to Brazilian earth. And the Furo soaking tub brings Japanese bathing tradition into a contemporary ritual.
©Ruy Teixeira | Roca
The new pieces soften Ruy Ohtake’s dramatic curves into gentler silhouettes, as if reaching out to collect water. Each basin is cast in Roca’s Fineceramic®, a material that allows for edges as thin as a blade yet remarkably resistant, with a velvety surface that invites the touch. Their contours open outward like petals, turning a utilitarian object into something sculptural and sensorial. Their lightness and precision open new possibilities for spatial design, allowing for striking focal points even in compact bathrooms.
©Ruy Teixeira | Roca
The basins are available in three finishes: matt white, which amplifies light and underlines the purity of their lines; matt black, which adds graphic depth and turns them striking centerpieces; and a warm terracotta, a subtle nod to Brazilian earth that brings an unexpected softness into bathroom spaces. Completing the collection, the freestanding Furo tub in Stonex® combines generous, rounded geometry with a stone-like texture, echoing the meditative calm of Japanese bathing culture.
Rather than a set of fixtures, the Ohtake Collection feels like quiet sculpture: tactile and precise, yet inviting. It embodies a dialogue between two sensibilities, Ruy Ohtake’s daring and Rodrigo Ohtake’s delicate, distilled into forms that turn everyday routines into moments of quiet beauty.
