INTERNATIONAL NEWS
7
Chicago plumbers
union breaks ground
on new training facility
Chicago’s Plumbers Local 130 broke ground on
a new three-storey West Loop training facility.
While some will still mourn the loss of the
detailed limestone-clad, neo-classical
Plumbing Industry Centre that once stood at
1400 W. Washington before an April date with
the wrecking ball, there’s no denying that the
replacement design — drawn up by the folks at
Gensler — is a breath of fresh air. More closely
resembling a trendsetting tech company than a
union apprenticeship, this certainly isn’t “Your
father’s typical plumbing school.”
Designed specifically to showcase state-of-
the-art sustainable technology that is typically
hidden away behind walls, the Local 130 JAC
Training Facility will highlight water circulation,
greywater harvesting, and solar heating
processes behind transparent panels.
In addition to traditional classrooms for
teaching theory, hands-on educational
workshops will allow students to learn welding,
cutting, and soldering.
The 48 000-square-foot centre will also feature
training environments meant to replicate real-
world conditions that future plumbers would
expect to face in the field, like a wood-frame
home and a sunken pit designed to simulate an
underground construction site.
The building’s material palette borrows heavily
from the plumbing trade as its perforated,
copper-anodised facade draws a clear parallel
to old-school copper piping. The facility also
features a large indoor multipurpose event
space plus ‘green’ roof with an outdoor terrace
facing Chicago’s skyline. Construction is
expected to wrap-up by July of next year. PA
Source: Curbed Chicago
Paul Flowers appointed
Lixil’s chief design officer
Paul Flowers is to expand his role to become Lixil’s chief design officer,
also overseeing Lixil Housing Technology (LHT).
The move will bring enhanced
consumer-focused design methodologies
to enable greater product differentiation
at LHT, which makes a wide range of
housing products, including windows,
entrance doors, exteriors, and interiors.
The appointment is effective 1 July 2018.
Flowers served as senior vice-president of design
for Grohe for 10 years, leading the team to
become the first brand in the sanitary industry
to win the prestigious Red Dot: Design Team of
the Year award in 2011. He assumed the role
of chief design officer of Lixil Water Technology
(LWT) in April 2015 and in that role, has taken
the creative, design-thinking culture that had
been so successful in defining the Grohe brand
and applied it to Lixil’s portfolio of leading water
technology brands. LWT is now home to a
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
dedicated in-house design team, based at
design studios in Japan, Germany, the US, and
Thailand. As a measure of the team’s success,
LWT has won 49 prestigious iF and Red Dot
Design awards in the past three years, with an
increasing number of brands picking up awards
beyond Grohe, while new differentiated products
drove faster-than-market growth across all
product categories at LWT in Japan.
Lixil president and CEO, Kinya Seto, commented,
“Design is now a key driver of our differentiation
strategy, along with technology, quality, and
brand. Paul has been absolutely influential in
embedding a design-centric approach at LWT,
which is consistently producing attractive,
differentiated products that appeal to consumer
needs. With the strategic fundamentals now on
track at LWT, I am pleased to expand Paul’s role
to also oversee housing and am confident that
differentiated products will drive similar growth
at LHT in the years to come.”
Flowers said, “With technological innovation
happening faster than ever and unlimited
information and peer-to-peer communication
at our fingertips, consumers now have more
power than ever before to select the brands and
products that meet their needs.
In this increasingly connected, yet fragmented
marketplace, Lixil is adopting a progressive
approach to design, tapping into consumer
trends early and turning these insights into
experiences for our consumers. I look forward
to the exciting new challenge with our housing
business and am confident that we can bring
greater value to Lixil’s brands.” PA
June 2018 Volume 24 I Number 4