There are exactly two weeks to go until the opening of the 2011 edition of the Fuorisalone exhibition and, as usual, the excitement of the last few days, and the official presentation of BESIDE, is starting to tie knots in our stomachs.
We aren’t ready to reveal too many details just yet about the result of the partnership between Massimiliano Adami and DesignTaleStudio, our creative laboratory. But just as a teaser, we can reveal that Adami has continued his path along the analysis of ceramic tiles from a creative point of view, experimenting and reinterpreting porcelain stoneware to discover new possibilities for this material.
While we wait to unveil everything in two weeks time, we would like to remind you of the first project created following the initial collaboration between Massimiliano Adami and DTS, to jog your memory on the approach and the point of view the Milan-based designer had of porcelain stoneware: Terraviva.
Terraviva was the result of the first collaboration between Adami and DTS: a meeting with lots of nods, winks, exchanges of opinions as well as visual and tactile senses.
That moment was the first step along the path of how the ceramic material would no longer come to be considered as a mere means to cover a surface, it was the start of a study on orthogonality, on the surface and on the concept of the ceramic tile intended as an integral part of a project, a decorative element, a break from the norm and from monotony.
Adami developed the need to bring porcelain stoneware and design closer to earth, to nature and terrestrial life.
It was no longer a question of making the space cleaner, more minimal and rigorous or to identify and imitate natural materials, but to empathize with the earth itself, to study the surfaces and the interruptions that make it unique.
Hammer at hand, Adami delighted reducing Refin porcelain stoneware slabs into smithereens and re-assembling them, using cracks as a decorative element and not as a defect.
The skilled, almost artisanal study of how and where the slabs broke and their re-composition was examined in tremendous detail and replicated at an industrial level using hydro-jet cutting machines to obtain the maximum cutting precision.
Cracks have been re-composed using coloured epoxy resins to highlight the contrast between the ceramic surface and the breakage line.
The result, a project that does not try to escape the passage of time but takes what is traditionally considered a defect and turns it into the focal point of the piece, there for the whole world to see.
Returning down the same path we successfully negotiated with Adami makes us eager to show you the new chapter of the partnership between Refin and Massimiliano Adami, BESIDE.
In two weeks time, at Refin Studio.
