Reece Bathroom Life Surry Hills, Sydney played host to Australia’s premier design exhibition Saturday in Design and the annual Bathroom Innovation Award winners announcement on August 20, 2011.

The soothing sounds of live acoustic guitar played while visitors took their first glimpse at many exclusive product launches including the Alape Tangens basins range, Unoceramica Axa X-tre Series and Axa H10 basins and the Nikles Pearl shower range.

Justin Wagemakers of Blue Sky Design Group in Sydney, NSW, was announced the winner of the Bathroom Innovation Award $20,000 professional prize for his design ‘Bathe’. The $10,000 student prize went to Toby Nowland for his ‘Eggshell Bath’. Toby is currently studying for his Master of Design (Product Design) at the University of South Australia and the university was also awarded $5,000 in prize money.

Reece was inundated with inspiring entries in this year’s competition, including an influx of bath designs. As bathrooms have increased in size in recent years, consumers have embraced the bath as the centrepiece of the bathroom, so designers are responding to this key trend and putting their twist on the modern bathtub. So it’s not surprising that the winning designs in both the professional and student categories were freestanding baths.

This year’s judging panel featured a host of industry experts, including David Clark (Vogue Living Editor), Shaynna Blaze (Interior designer and presenter on Selling Houses Australia), Andrea Wilson (Senior Interior Architect at ARM), Romano Adolini (internationally renowned architect and designer) and Belinda Geels.

>> Justin Wagemakers' Bathe
>> Toby Nowland's Eggshell Bath
>> All 2011 Finalists

>> More information of products released on the day.

>> Photos from the day