Our designers for AXOR and hansgrohe

PHOENIX: Think tank with distinction

PHOENIX is one of the world’s most eminent names in product and interaction design. The Stuttgart-based design studio makes everyday objects desirable with an extra boost in emotions. For more than 30 years, PHOENIX has designed our products. Together with our longtime partner, we also developed our new digital products. In this way, we are shaping the future in an increasingly connected world.

PHOENIX Stuttgart, Munich, and Shanghai.
Andreas Diefenbach, Managing Partner (left), and Matthias Oesterle, Design Director (right) (Copyright: Phoenix Design).

Creative Team from the Southwest

PHOENIX focuses on clean, modern lines – whether in faucets, office chairs, or gymnastics equipment; for showers, smart phones, or service robots. The design studio from Stuttgart designs products that function, give pleasure, and help the environment. The team of designers relies on self-explanatory interaction between user and product, aiming to use it to make the identity of a brand come alive in a touching way. It's not uncommon for these creative minds to succeed in a balancing act between functionality and magic. Product design and the layout of digital interfaces are closely interlocked these days. That is why roughly one third of the studio's employees work on projects having to do with interaction design.

The Stuttgart studio’s success proves them correct: PHOENIX has received more than 900 renowned design prized to date. The design workshop has been named the best "Design Studio" at the international iF World Design Guide for many years in a row.

Partners for 30 years: Hansgrohe and PHOENIX

A long history bonds PHOENIX and Hansgrohe. For more than 30 years, the studio has exclusively drafted the product design for the hansgrohe brand’s entire product range. PHOENIX has also repeatedly designed successful creations for the AXOR designer brand. It was not until the 1970s that design moved into the bathroom. Hansgrohe and PHOENIX jointly and decisively shaped this change. The creative minds from Stuttgart and the sanitation specialists from Schiltach are truly a successful team.

Hansgrohe and PHOENIX work together toward an intelligent combination of design, function, and comfort. Their goals are user-friendly bathroom design and products that are technically and aesthetically durable. The designers from Stuttgart have designed all of the hansgrohe brand’s key products, including milestones in bathroom design. Among other things, PHOENIX launched the hansgrohe bestseller Raindance in 2003. With its large spray disc and short, ergonomic handle, this hand shower turned the usual proportions upside down. Raindance made a big splash in the sanitation world: Hansgrohe’s sensuous innovation reinvented the market for shower products.

Shower experience for all the senses

2019 PHOENIX and Hansgrohe present a whole new era of showering: The RainTunes digital shower system links water, light, sound, and fragrance to create a holistic water experience for all the senses. RainTunes is controlled using RainButtons or the RainPad. RainButtons are control buttons that can be positioned anywhere and allow you to adjust spray modes, water flow, and temperature. The digital RainPad control panel operates the shower via a permanently installed, central control panel.

Solving the problems of the future – today

Together with our long-time design partner PHOENIX we have set out to solve the bathroom problems of the future: water scarcity, climate crisis, lack of resources. The result is Hansgrohe’s Green Vision Beyond Water: Rethinking Bathroom Culture - a conceptual bathroom in harmony with people and nature.

PHOENIX has won several design awards with many creations for the Hansgrohe Group.

PHOENIX: A piece of German design history

The biographies of the founders of PHOENIX, Andreas Haug (born 1946) and Tom Schönherr (born 1954) are closely interwoven with the design history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The two caused a sensation in the 1970s at frogdesign, a legendary design studio in Altensteig. In 1987, they established their own studio together.

Today, PHOENIX is a regular guest at international design fairs and sends their luminaries to lectures around the world. Since 2010 the studio has been represented in China. The new Phoenix Design Shanghai Ltd. has been officially inaugurated in 2017. Munich is another important location for PHOENIX since 2015. Its own academy promotes young designers. The founders also have the future in mind today and handed over to the next generation in the spring of 2019. "Change and reinvention belong to the DNA of PHOENIX. We are proud and happy that we have found a strong successor, " says Tom Schönherr.

You can learn more about PHOENIX and the top team’s work at their website: phoenixdesign.com.

“We always focus on the needs of people in our designs.”
Tom Schönherr, Founder, PHOENIX
The Bathroom of the Future
Hansgrohe's Green Vision
Our premium products
How quality made by Hansgrohe works