Rick Owens started designing furniture so he would have something to sit on. Nowadays, it’s more of an obsession. “Everything has to be customized,” he says. “I’ve dug myself into a design k-hole.” Having already tackled chairs, tables, beds, and benches—new versions of which, in petrified wood, plywood (above, left), and ox bone (above, right), and will be on display at Design Basel in Switzerland June 12 through 17—he is taking on the toilet, reinterpreting it in rock crystal. (“Concrete doesn’t seem sanitary, and marble gets a bit blingy,” he explains.) And while Owens plans to show his commode at New York’s Salon 94 gallery later this year, he is quick to dismiss it as a Duchampian stunt. “It’s more about elevating the mundane. I don’t believe in saving Sunday best for Sunday.”
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