Fringe Interior

Earthtech PUMICE_GROUND

florim > Wallcovering

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Matrice Sostanza

florim > Wallcovering

An atlas of modular signs to be combined in a wide variety of layouts. «We love concrete as a material, its versatility and its plain, austere look. We have completed our carefully designed surfaces with graphic patterning inspired by the human actions of weaving and embroidering.» Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò To appreciate the profundity of the design project undertaken by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò for Cedit, it is both necessary and explanatory to start from the title the collection bears. In modern usage the term Matrice, in Italian, refers to a die or mould used to reproduce an object, but its origins are much more remote, with a meaning closer to the English “matrix”, meaning the underlying basis of something. The root of the word is related to Mater or mother: the name Matrice thus relates to the origin or cause of something. This dichotomy is expressed in several levels within the work of these architects, who study the world from a sophisticated conceptual approach and then transform it into a design. Starting from the idea of ceramic coverings, which have always been a tool not so much of architecture as of interior design, the artists work back to the origin of the surface and its decoration within their own discipline: they look at what we used to call the modern age, where modernity has also brought an uncompromising brutality, and where the use of bare concrete became the statement of an attitude to life with no time to spare for manners. Concrete is originally a liquid material, intended for shaping, which can therefore absorb and retain any type of mark created by the material and mould used to form it. Architects midway between rationalism and brutalism have used the rough-and-ready language of concrete combined with a last, elegant, anthropic decorative motif impressed on the material, that makes the concept of covering superfluous, because its place, in its older meaning of decoration rather than functional cladding, is taken by the regular patterning created in the material itself. There are therefore various grounds for believing that, in this collection, the artists are once again working in architectural terms. Firstly, with a simplicity typical of BRH+, they reduce the initial concepts to their minimal terms. So although this is a collection of coverings for walls, indoor floors, outdoor pavings and curtain walls, a great deal of time was spent on destructuring the idea of the ceramic covering itself. Unfortunately, nowadays there is no space in the contemporary construction sector for the radical approach of the past, so the cladding designed for the building actually lays bare the interior, using the choice of material – accurately interpreted (with shade variation) on the basis of an assortment of various types – to restore visual elegance and a fundamental severity. Attention to scale is another architectural feature: Matrice offers modules with architectural dimensions and different sizes through the development of “large slabs”, eliminating the visual regular grid effect. Thanks to this visual reset, geographic forms are perceived to emerge from dense, grey concrete surfaces decorated as in bygone days by special processes and by weathering during drying. The various types of slab, each an atlas of subtle, vibrant signs on the surfaces, comprise finishes that reproduce the visual effect of reinforced concrete – with the aggregates in the cement more clearly visible, of formwork – with the signs impressed on the concrete by the timber used, of a structured surface resembling bare cement plaster, of ridged and streaked surfaces – with patterning resembling some kinds of linear surface finishing processes – and finally a smooth, or basic version, over which Matrice exercises the dichotomy referred to earlier. It is on these surfaces that Brondi and Rainò have imagined additional design reverberations, a figurative code that rejects the concept of the grid, previously inseparable from that of the module: by means of a vocabulary of graphic marks cut into the slabs with a depth of 3 mm (the width of the gap left between modules during installation), they provide a framework for infinite combinations of possible dialogues. Just as in embroidery, which is based on grids of stitches and geometric repetitions, and where every stitch is at right-angles to another one to construct forms and decorations. Also taken from embroidery is the idea of introducing a degree of “softness” to reduce the stiffness of intentionally deaf surfaces. There is the impression of patterns that can continue for infinity, as in textile weaving, and a scale that, unlike the surface being worked on, is imagined as suspended and lightweight. They may not admit it, but BRH+ know a lot about music, including electronic music, and it appears to me that this organised tangle of infinite signs – unidentifiable without an overview – is rather like the representations of synthesized sounds. Sounds that are produced by machines, and thus “woven” by sampling and overlapping sounds of the most unlikely origins, combined to form jingles which, once heard, are imprinted indelibly on the brain. This may be why I am so interested in the space between this “melodic film” and its deaf, damp substrate. The eyes can navigate this suspended reality without fear of disturbance. So we are faced with different surfaces, different sizes and different graphic signs. But only one colour (surprise!) to prevent a cacophony not just of signs but also of possible interpretations: the artists retain their radical principles (and their generosity), and as curators, a role in which they are skilled, they leave the players (architects and installers) to add their own interpretations. In their hands this colour, expressed in Matrice, will produce motifs on surfaces in living spaces for someone else. This stylish covering and its workmanship will be left to the hands of someone who will probably never read this, but will be on a building site, with the radio playing on a stereo system, concentrating on installing the very pieces we describe. So a radical, apparently silent, design project like this has repercussions for the real world we live in. Matrice has no form of its own but merely acquires the ornamentation drawn on its surfaces by a second group of artists. And here this routine action, standardised by the form approved for production and workmanlike efficiency, is the origin and cause of change, generating a variability of choices and interpretations, on that dusty building site where music plays and mortar flows.

Earthtech OUTBACK_GROUND

florim > Wallcovering

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Rilievi Lido

florim > Wall Paint

The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language. This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.

Matrice Aura

florim > Wallcovering

An atlas of modular signs to be combined in a wide variety of layouts. «We love concrete as a material, its versatility and its plain, austere look. We have completed our carefully designed surfaces with graphic patterning inspired by the human actions of weaving and embroidering.» Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò To appreciate the profundity of the design project undertaken by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò for Cedit, it is both necessary and explanatory to start from the title the collection bears. In modern usage the term Matrice, in Italian, refers to a die or mould used to reproduce an object, but its origins are much more remote, with a meaning closer to the English “matrix”, meaning the underlying basis of something. The root of the word is related to Mater or mother: the name Matrice thus relates to the origin or cause of something. This dichotomy is expressed in several levels within the work of these architects, who study the world from a sophisticated conceptual approach and then transform it into a design. Starting from the idea of ceramic coverings, which have always been a tool not so much of architecture as of interior design, the artists work back to the origin of the surface and its decoration within their own discipline: they look at what we used to call the modern age, where modernity has also brought an uncompromising brutality, and where the use of bare concrete became the statement of an attitude to life with no time to spare for manners. Concrete is originally a liquid material, intended for shaping, which can therefore absorb and retain any type of mark created by the material and mould used to form it. Architects midway between rationalism and brutalism have used the rough-and-ready language of concrete combined with a last, elegant, anthropic decorative motif impressed on the material, that makes the concept of covering superfluous, because its place, in its older meaning of decoration rather than functional cladding, is taken by the regular patterning created in the material itself. There are therefore various grounds for believing that, in this collection, the artists are once again working in architectural terms. Firstly, with a simplicity typical of BRH+, they reduce the initial concepts to their minimal terms. So although this is a collection of coverings for walls, indoor floors, outdoor pavings and curtain walls, a great deal of time was spent on destructuring the idea of the ceramic covering itself. Unfortunately, nowadays there is no space in the contemporary construction sector for the radical approach of the past, so the cladding designed for the building actually lays bare the interior, using the choice of material – accurately interpreted (with shade variation) on the basis of an assortment of various types – to restore visual elegance and a fundamental severity. Attention to scale is another architectural feature: Matrice offers modules with architectural dimensions and different sizes through the development of “large slabs”, eliminating the visual regular grid effect. Thanks to this visual reset, geographic forms are perceived to emerge from dense, grey concrete surfaces decorated as in bygone days by special processes and by weathering during drying. The various types of slab, each an atlas of subtle, vibrant signs on the surfaces, comprise finishes that reproduce the visual effect of reinforced concrete – with the aggregates in the cement more clearly visible, of formwork – with the signs impressed on the concrete by the timber used, of a structured surface resembling bare cement plaster, of ridged and streaked surfaces – with patterning resembling some kinds of linear surface finishing processes – and finally a smooth, or basic version, over which Matrice exercises the dichotomy referred to earlier. It is on these surfaces that Brondi and Rainò have imagined additional design reverberations, a figurative code that rejects the concept of the grid, previously inseparable from that of the module: by means of a vocabulary of graphic marks cut into the slabs with a depth of 3 mm (the width of the gap left between modules during installation), they provide a framework for infinite combinations of possible dialogues. Just as in embroidery, which is based on grids of stitches and geometric repetitions, and where every stitch is at right-angles to another one to construct forms and decorations. Also taken from embroidery is the idea of introducing a degree of “softness” to reduce the stiffness of intentionally deaf surfaces. There is the impression of patterns that can continue for infinity, as in textile weaving, and a scale that, unlike the surface being worked on, is imagined as suspended and lightweight. They may not admit it, but BRH+ know a lot about music, including electronic music, and it appears to me that this organised tangle of infinite signs – unidentifiable without an overview – is rather like the representations of synthesized sounds. Sounds that are produced by machines, and thus “woven” by sampling and overlapping sounds of the most unlikely origins, combined to form jingles which, once heard, are imprinted indelibly on the brain. This may be why I am so interested in the space between this “melodic film” and its deaf, damp substrate. The eyes can navigate this suspended reality without fear of disturbance. So we are faced with different surfaces, different sizes and different graphic signs. But only one colour (surprise!) to prevent a cacophony not just of signs but also of possible interpretations: the artists retain their radical principles (and their generosity), and as curators, a role in which they are skilled, they leave the players (architects and installers) to add their own interpretations. In their hands this colour, expressed in Matrice, will produce motifs on surfaces in living spaces for someone else. This stylish covering and its workmanship will be left to the hands of someone who will probably never read this, but will be on a building site, with the radio playing on a stereo system, concentrating on installing the very pieces we describe. So a radical, apparently silent, design project like this has repercussions for the real world we live in. Matrice has no form of its own but merely acquires the ornamentation drawn on its surfaces by a second group of artists. And here this routine action, standardised by the form approved for production and workmanlike efficiency, is the origin and cause of change, generating a variability of choices and interpretations, on that dusty building site where music plays and mortar flows.

Rainforest Floor Lamp

castrolighting > Floor lamp

The Rainforest Collection arose from the timeless lighting celebration of nature silhouettes, their elements, and movements. Immerse yourself into the magnificent atmosphere of the sparkling rainforest where the art of brass craftsmanship becomes luxury lighting design. The ultimate fusion between the artistic design, authenticity of traditional Portuguese metal-work techniques, and creative craftsmanship. The Rainforest floor lamp is unparalleled in the refinement and grace it represents. The gold-plated brass coupled with clear Marquina marble - applied by hand - brings a delicate charisma that resembles nature in full bloom. Broad-leaves masterpiece convening through this modern lighting design taking you to remote spaces and the open sky. A contemporary floor lamp that creates an exceptional ambiance to the classy interiors. Resembling a floor plant, this piece rises from a gold-plated vessel from which the light travels up between the leaves creating a sense of surrealist nature, sharping the perfect wild flora aesthetic for any scenario. A luxury custom-designed collection was made to be featured in the most sophisticated projects organically. The sizes and distribution of the elements can be naturally customizable. This handmade floor light is perfect for vibrant living rooms, dining rooms, or hallways, fitting in a vast variety of decors. This beautiful floor lamp is the right choice for a mid-century modern, modern classic, or art deco interior style. #graceofnature VIEW FULL FAMILY

Earthtech FOG_GROUND

florim > Wallcovering

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Rilievi Nebbia

florim > Wall Paint

The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language. This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.

Matrice Essenza

florim > Wallcovering

An atlas of modular signs to be combined in a wide variety of layouts. «We love concrete as a material, its versatility and its plain, austere look. We have completed our carefully designed surfaces with graphic patterning inspired by the human actions of weaving and embroidering.» Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò To appreciate the profundity of the design project undertaken by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò for Cedit, it is both necessary and explanatory to start from the title the collection bears. In modern usage the term Matrice, in Italian, refers to a die or mould used to reproduce an object, but its origins are much more remote, with a meaning closer to the English “matrix”, meaning the underlying basis of something. The root of the word is related to Mater or mother: the name Matrice thus relates to the origin or cause of something. This dichotomy is expressed in several levels within the work of these architects, who study the world from a sophisticated conceptual approach and then transform it into a design. Starting from the idea of ceramic coverings, which have always been a tool not so much of architecture as of interior design, the artists work back to the origin of the surface and its decoration within their own discipline: they look at what we used to call the modern age, where modernity has also brought an uncompromising brutality, and where the use of bare concrete became the statement of an attitude to life with no time to spare for manners. Concrete is originally a liquid material, intended for shaping, which can therefore absorb and retain any type of mark created by the material and mould used to form it. Architects midway between rationalism and brutalism have used the rough-and-ready language of concrete combined with a last, elegant, anthropic decorative motif impressed on the material, that makes the concept of covering superfluous, because its place, in its older meaning of decoration rather than functional cladding, is taken by the regular patterning created in the material itself. There are therefore various grounds for believing that, in this collection, the artists are once again working in architectural terms. Firstly, with a simplicity typical of BRH+, they reduce the initial concepts to their minimal terms. So although this is a collection of coverings for walls, indoor floors, outdoor pavings and curtain walls, a great deal of time was spent on destructuring the idea of the ceramic covering itself. Unfortunately, nowadays there is no space in the contemporary construction sector for the radical approach of the past, so the cladding designed for the building actually lays bare the interior, using the choice of material – accurately interpreted (with shade variation) on the basis of an assortment of various types – to restore visual elegance and a fundamental severity. Attention to scale is another architectural feature: Matrice offers modules with architectural dimensions and different sizes through the development of “large slabs”, eliminating the visual regular grid effect. Thanks to this visual reset, geographic forms are perceived to emerge from dense, grey concrete surfaces decorated as in bygone days by special processes and by weathering during drying. The various types of slab, each an atlas of subtle, vibrant signs on the surfaces, comprise finishes that reproduce the visual effect of reinforced concrete – with the aggregates in the cement more clearly visible, of formwork – with the signs impressed on the concrete by the timber used, of a structured surface resembling bare cement plaster, of ridged and streaked surfaces – with patterning resembling some kinds of linear surface finishing processes – and finally a smooth, or basic version, over which Matrice exercises the dichotomy referred to earlier. It is on these surfaces that Brondi and Rainò have imagined additional design reverberations, a figurative code that rejects the concept of the grid, previously inseparable from that of the module: by means of a vocabulary of graphic marks cut into the slabs with a depth of 3 mm (the width of the gap left between modules during installation), they provide a framework for infinite combinations of possible dialogues. Just as in embroidery, which is based on grids of stitches and geometric repetitions, and where every stitch is at right-angles to another one to construct forms and decorations. Also taken from embroidery is the idea of introducing a degree of “softness” to reduce the stiffness of intentionally deaf surfaces. There is the impression of patterns that can continue for infinity, as in textile weaving, and a scale that, unlike the surface being worked on, is imagined as suspended and lightweight. They may not admit it, but BRH+ know a lot about music, including electronic music, and it appears to me that this organised tangle of infinite signs – unidentifiable without an overview – is rather like the representations of synthesized sounds. Sounds that are produced by machines, and thus “woven” by sampling and overlapping sounds of the most unlikely origins, combined to form jingles which, once heard, are imprinted indelibly on the brain. This may be why I am so interested in the space between this “melodic film” and its deaf, damp substrate. The eyes can navigate this suspended reality without fear of disturbance. So we are faced with different surfaces, different sizes and different graphic signs. But only one colour (surprise!) to prevent a cacophony not just of signs but also of possible interpretations: the artists retain their radical principles (and their generosity), and as curators, a role in which they are skilled, they leave the players (architects and installers) to add their own interpretations. In their hands this colour, expressed in Matrice, will produce motifs on surfaces in living spaces for someone else. This stylish covering and its workmanship will be left to the hands of someone who will probably never read this, but will be on a building site, with the radio playing on a stereo system, concentrating on installing the very pieces we describe. So a radical, apparently silent, design project like this has repercussions for the real world we live in. Matrice has no form of its own but merely acquires the ornamentation drawn on its surfaces by a second group of artists. And here this routine action, standardised by the form approved for production and workmanlike efficiency, is the origin and cause of change, generating a variability of choices and interpretations, on that dusty building site where music plays and mortar flows.

Rilievi Terra

florim > Wall Paint

The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language. This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.

Matrice Struttura

florim > Wallcovering

An atlas of modular signs to be combined in a wide variety of layouts. «We love concrete as a material, its versatility and its plain, austere look. We have completed our carefully designed surfaces with graphic patterning inspired by the human actions of weaving and embroidering.» Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò To appreciate the profundity of the design project undertaken by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò for Cedit, it is both necessary and explanatory to start from the title the collection bears. In modern usage the term Matrice, in Italian, refers to a die or mould used to reproduce an object, but its origins are much more remote, with a meaning closer to the English “matrix”, meaning the underlying basis of something. The root of the word is related to Mater or mother: the name Matrice thus relates to the origin or cause of something. This dichotomy is expressed in several levels within the work of these architects, who study the world from a sophisticated conceptual approach and then transform it into a design. Starting from the idea of ceramic coverings, which have always been a tool not so much of architecture as of interior design, the artists work back to the origin of the surface and its decoration within their own discipline: they look at what we used to call the modern age, where modernity has also brought an uncompromising brutality, and where the use of bare concrete became the statement of an attitude to life with no time to spare for manners. Concrete is originally a liquid material, intended for shaping, which can therefore absorb and retain any type of mark created by the material and mould used to form it. Architects midway between rationalism and brutalism have used the rough-and-ready language of concrete combined with a last, elegant, anthropic decorative motif impressed on the material, that makes the concept of covering superfluous, because its place, in its older meaning of decoration rather than functional cladding, is taken by the regular patterning created in the material itself. There are therefore various grounds for believing that, in this collection, the artists are once again working in architectural terms. Firstly, with a simplicity typical of BRH+, they reduce the initial concepts to their minimal terms. So although this is a collection of coverings for walls, indoor floors, outdoor pavings and curtain walls, a great deal of time was spent on destructuring the idea of the ceramic covering itself. Unfortunately, nowadays there is no space in the contemporary construction sector for the radical approach of the past, so the cladding designed for the building actually lays bare the interior, using the choice of material – accurately interpreted (with shade variation) on the basis of an assortment of various types – to restore visual elegance and a fundamental severity. Attention to scale is another architectural feature: Matrice offers modules with architectural dimensions and different sizes through the development of “large slabs”, eliminating the visual regular grid effect. Thanks to this visual reset, geographic forms are perceived to emerge from dense, grey concrete surfaces decorated as in bygone days by special processes and by weathering during drying. The various types of slab, each an atlas of subtle, vibrant signs on the surfaces, comprise finishes that reproduce the visual effect of reinforced concrete – with the aggregates in the cement more clearly visible, of formwork – with the signs impressed on the concrete by the timber used, of a structured surface resembling bare cement plaster, of ridged and streaked surfaces – with patterning resembling some kinds of linear surface finishing processes – and finally a smooth, or basic version, over which Matrice exercises the dichotomy referred to earlier. It is on these surfaces that Brondi and Rainò have imagined additional design reverberations, a figurative code that rejects the concept of the grid, previously inseparable from that of the module: by means of a vocabulary of graphic marks cut into the slabs with a depth of 3 mm (the width of the gap left between modules during installation), they provide a framework for infinite combinations of possible dialogues. Just as in embroidery, which is based on grids of stitches and geometric repetitions, and where every stitch is at right-angles to another one to construct forms and decorations. Also taken from embroidery is the idea of introducing a degree of “softness” to reduce the stiffness of intentionally deaf surfaces. There is the impression of patterns that can continue for infinity, as in textile weaving, and a scale that, unlike the surface being worked on, is imagined as suspended and lightweight. They may not admit it, but BRH+ know a lot about music, including electronic music, and it appears to me that this organised tangle of infinite signs – unidentifiable without an overview – is rather like the representations of synthesized sounds. Sounds that are produced by machines, and thus “woven” by sampling and overlapping sounds of the most unlikely origins, combined to form jingles which, once heard, are imprinted indelibly on the brain. This may be why I am so interested in the space between this “melodic film” and its deaf, damp substrate. The eyes can navigate this suspended reality without fear of disturbance. So we are faced with different surfaces, different sizes and different graphic signs. But only one colour (surprise!) to prevent a cacophony not just of signs but also of possible interpretations: the artists retain their radical principles (and their generosity), and as curators, a role in which they are skilled, they leave the players (architects and installers) to add their own interpretations. In their hands this colour, expressed in Matrice, will produce motifs on surfaces in living spaces for someone else. This stylish covering and its workmanship will be left to the hands of someone who will probably never read this, but will be on a building site, with the radio playing on a stereo system, concentrating on installing the very pieces we describe. So a radical, apparently silent, design project like this has repercussions for the real world we live in. Matrice has no form of its own but merely acquires the ornamentation drawn on its surfaces by a second group of artists. And here this routine action, standardised by the form approved for production and workmanlike efficiency, is the origin and cause of change, generating a variability of choices and interpretations, on that dusty building site where music plays and mortar flows.

Earthtech SAVANNAH_FLAKES

florim > Wall tile-stone-brick

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Earthtech PUMICE_FLAKES

florim > Wall tile-stone-brick

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Earthtech DESERT_GROUND

florim > Wallcovering

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Archeologie Archeologie Grigio

florim > Wall Paint

The poetics of the wall. The forgotten wall. «A wall is like a book to be opened, a journey into the interior, revealing the experiences, memories, signs and symbols which this fragment of masonry has absorbed over the centuries.» Franco Guerzoni It is difficult to resist the beauty of Franco Guerzoni's art, created by a rare harmony of feeling and intellect, poetry and mind. The artist expresses this through paintings which, although complex in structure, are joyous and sensual, with bright colours made, like those of the great masters of the past, from choice powdered ingredients. A painter with a technique rich in traditional skills, Guerzoni offers a version of modernity involving an intense fundamental relationship with his images and with space. In fact, the dialectic between painting and space, form and architecture, time and memory seems to be essential to his art. As his works specifically created for CEDIT clearly express, his creations achieve a perfect balance between the spatial dimension and intensely lyrical use of colour, which here becomes a soft, liquid form of matter, wandering across the surface of a dazzling lime-plaster white. White, metaphor for the clear light of day, as it was in the large, complex canvases exhibited in his personal exhibition at the 1990 Venice Biennale, is the background for forms of colour which renew the pleasure to be had from painting and the memory of an image glimpsed on the vast expanse of the surface. In the more recent works, these voluptuous shades are transformed into subtle shadows of colour that delicately caress the surface. All it takes is one wall, the only surviving wall of what was once a house, on which time has recorded its own, unavoidable passing, leaving traces of colour that is still vibrant, although faded in places, to allow the memory of the image to transpire, fragile and uncertain, in the physicality of the surface, to bear tangible witness to the existence of history, a mysterious visual memory, the extension into the present of the life of things. A memory of the past on a contemporary wall. The idea of memory is central to Franco Guerzoni's poetics: private, secret memory and the collective memory of the past. Fragmentary and indecipherable, perceived by the artist with the aid of what is left of the images, the fragment. A relic of a totality which can no longer be reconstructed but only imagined in poetic terms, the fragment, a fraction of an image conserved by time, guides the artist's fantastic archaeological journey in search of the world's memory. However, this journey takes him in the opposite direction to the archaeologist, for whom the fragment - fundamental because it reveals a trace of the past is the starting-point for an attempt to reconstruct history. For Guerzoni, the fragment is the endpoint of his work, the goal for which he strives in his investigation of the surface, as he digs deep down, leafing through the deposits of time and memory. Like the large pages of a book traced with fragile sketches, embryonic forms whose meaning has been lost in time, leaving only fleeting traces, uncertain, ambiguous, mysterious morphologies. It marks the start of a journey into the mind of the artist-archaeologist, an adventurous journey into the inextricable labyrinth of the mind, to unearth what is hidden, shuffling the cards in a perennial contamination of images, memory, signs and traces, in search of a meaning, which no sooner appears than it is lost, merging into time and once again becoming a dream, an imaginary journey into fantasy and wonder. And this is the case in the tryptic created for CEDIT, which placed a new challenge before the artist: to transfer "his" image, the remains and fragments of a forgotten wall onto a new material for him “stunning, large-sized ceramic slabs“ and a real wall, without this tautology betraying the painting's deep meaning, its fertile magic of lines and colours, from which the image is born. And the artist is fully aware of this. Guerzoni describes his art as a "gamble": a gamble that is a critical test, an act of daring, dangerous and risky. This is the challenge he sets himself. It is a challenge he easily overcomes, expressing himself on these large walls with a rediscovered pleasure in painting, no longer restrained and apparently absorbed by the dense, uneven coloured surface but set free and almost luxuriously accentuated. In his large, demanding works for CEDIT, Guerzoni achieves a new, consummate mode of painting, in which the architecture of the surfaces provides a poetic meeting-point between the two founding components of his style, the complex, well thought-out composition and the lyricism of colour.

Earthtech CARBON_GROUND

florim > Wallcovering

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Rilievi Sabbia

florim > Wall Paint

The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language. This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.

Connery

minotti > Sofa

Contemporary, with a strong architectural appeal and pure lines reminiscent of the Mid-Century American spirit, the Connery seating system sports an exquisite aesthetic and design that instantly catch the eye. The clever combination of fine materials and sophisticated details adds a hint of couture to its design. An extremely versatile seating system, in terms of both composition and combination of materials, Connery has a distinctive personality also expressed in the pairing of original square and round chaise-longues. With its geometric rigour, the base creates an original contrast with the softness of the seat, conceived as a single cushion punctuated by light stitching defining the width of the seat - 83 or 68 cm - and with the structure of the backrest and armrest, covered in channelled goose down padding. The backrest and armrest form a single volume, with a 45° split in the corner. As well as the fabric covering, the padded structural base can also feature a covering with strips of leather, crafted with the same technique used in fine leather luggage-crafting. References to the concept of high-end leather goods are also found in the headrests and the elegant “C”-shaped Flap surfaces, which seamlessly blend into the seating elements, animating the compositions with a vibrant rhythm. The structural base is raised from the ground on thin blades in extruded aluminium in a Brandy polished varnished finish, positioned at the front, giving the sofa an appealing and airy look, and recalling the metal parts of trunks and suitcases. The Flap shelves reiterate the strip design of the structural base and make the system functional, offering stylish, surfaces on which to place objects. Covered in leather or Moka ash veneer, they dialogue harmoniously with the textures of the covering. The leather bands of the structural base, sewn together with straps and marked out by stitching that add rhythm to the design, are made with the same technique used in fine leather luggage-crafting. The same concept of high-end leather goods also inspires the freely adjustable headrests. The well-structured, customisable range, offering many different compositional options, in addition to longer square chaise-longues, also includes circular elements, which can be positioned near the sofa as atolls.

Earthtech DESERT_FLAKES

florim > Wall tile-stone-brick

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Rilievi Cielo

florim > Wall Paint

The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language. This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.

Earthtech FOG_FLAKES

florim > Wall tile-stone-brick

From an ancient past to a responsible future The collection injects new life into the earth through a sustainable production process, with a strong focus on green management, to offer the architect an exceptional technical and aesthetic performance in compliance with the socio-environmental context and the latest eco-friendly building needs. With EARTHTECH earth becomes “technical earth” with a highly innovative content, offering new solutions to green architecture and fulfilling the new frontiers of circular economy in construction, guaranteeing a sustainable future. EARTHTECH offers a choice of organic textures to observe and touch, thanks to the wide range of finishes (Comfort, Glossy-Bright and structured) which add a tactile and unexpected perceptive dimension for use in all types of application. <a class="btn arrow" href="https://www.florim.com/en/surfaces/the-new-comfort-surface/"> Discover the new Comfort surface </a> EARTHTECH/ is also a return to the origins of the Florim brand through a full body technical product that blends surface and thickness and derives from the spontaneous mixing of carefully pre-selected fragments and pigments of different shades which give the material a unique, one-of-a-kind visual effect in each slab, mimicking the amazing variety of colours and elements in nature. The result is a composite product with a textured design, in which the flakes and aggregate grains create an original mélange effect that is vitrified during firing, producing a robust, high-quality and exceptionally strong and wear-resistant product; one which can be used in any type of building setting and weather conditions, even the harshest.

Rilievi Salvia

florim > Wall Paint

The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language. This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.

Archeologie Archeologie Bianco

florim > Wall Paint

The poetics of the wall. The forgotten wall. «A wall is like a book to be opened, a journey into the interior, revealing the experiences, memories, signs and symbols which this fragment of masonry has absorbed over the centuries.» Franco Guerzoni It is difficult to resist the beauty of Franco Guerzoni's art, created by a rare harmony of feeling and intellect, poetry and mind. The artist expresses this through paintings which, although complex in structure, are joyous and sensual, with bright colours made, like those of the great masters of the past, from choice powdered ingredients. A painter with a technique rich in traditional skills, Guerzoni offers a version of modernity involving an intense fundamental relationship with his images and with space. In fact, the dialectic between painting and space, form and architecture, time and memory seems to be essential to his art. As his works specifically created for CEDIT clearly express, his creations achieve a perfect balance between the spatial dimension and intensely lyrical use of colour, which here becomes a soft, liquid form of matter, wandering across the surface of a dazzling lime-plaster white. White, metaphor for the clear light of day, as it was in the large, complex canvases exhibited in his personal exhibition at the 1990 Venice Biennale, is the background for forms of colour which renew the pleasure to be had from painting and the memory of an image glimpsed on the vast expanse of the surface. In the more recent works, these voluptuous shades are transformed into subtle shadows of colour that delicately caress the surface. All it takes is one wall, the only surviving wall of what was once a house, on which time has recorded its own, unavoidable passing, leaving traces of colour that is still vibrant, although faded in places, to allow the memory of the image to transpire, fragile and uncertain, in the physicality of the surface, to bear tangible witness to the existence of history, a mysterious visual memory, the extension into the present of the life of things. A memory of the past on a contemporary wall. The idea of memory is central to Franco Guerzoni's poetics: private, secret memory and the collective memory of the past. Fragmentary and indecipherable, perceived by the artist with the aid of what is left of the images, the fragment. A relic of a totality which can no longer be reconstructed but only imagined in poetic terms, the fragment, a fraction of an image conserved by time, guides the artist's fantastic archaeological journey in search of the world's memory. However, this journey takes him in the opposite direction to the archaeologist, for whom the fragment - fundamental because it reveals a trace of the past is the starting-point for an attempt to reconstruct history. For Guerzoni, the fragment is the endpoint of his work, the goal for which he strives in his investigation of the surface, as he digs deep down, leafing through the deposits of time and memory. Like the large pages of a book traced with fragile sketches, embryonic forms whose meaning has been lost in time, leaving only fleeting traces, uncertain, ambiguous, mysterious morphologies. It marks the start of a journey into the mind of the artist-archaeologist, an adventurous journey into the inextricable labyrinth of the mind, to unearth what is hidden, shuffling the cards in a perennial contamination of images, memory, signs and traces, in search of a meaning, which no sooner appears than it is lost, merging into time and once again becoming a dream, an imaginary journey into fantasy and wonder. And this is the case in the tryptic created for CEDIT, which placed a new challenge before the artist: to transfer "his" image, the remains and fragments of a forgotten wall onto a new material for him “stunning, large-sized ceramic slabs“ and a real wall, without this tautology betraying the painting's deep meaning, its fertile magic of lines and colours, from which the image is born. And the artist is fully aware of this. Guerzoni describes his art as a "gamble": a gamble that is a critical test, an act of daring, dangerous and risky. This is the challenge he sets himself. It is a challenge he easily overcomes, expressing himself on these large walls with a rediscovered pleasure in painting, no longer restrained and apparently absorbed by the dense, uneven coloured surface but set free and almost luxuriously accentuated. In his large, demanding works for CEDIT, Guerzoni achieves a new, consummate mode of painting, in which the architecture of the surfaces provides a poetic meeting-point between the two founding components of his style, the complex, well thought-out composition and the lyricism of colour.

Araldica Base Corallo

florim > Wall Paint

The miscellany of bright, contrasting, pure colours. The manifest extroversion of decor. The solutions provided to complete the range are in a different tone: reflecting the desire to "stage" a clear contrast with the multicolour ceramic wall coverings, these slabs are in completely neutral shades, in the grey frequencies of concrete. «The collection is intended to create a struggle, a fight. Between something very stiff, which sees itself as governed by clear rules, and a variable, marbled paper, which aims to be completely free.» Federico Pepe "Once upon a time, there was a Roman emperor who lived on a huge splinter in space, a spaceship of multi-coloured marble, where techno music played incessantly. That day he left his spaceship to go to dinner at the Sun King's home, riding his sinuous golden dragon with blood-red eyes."If there were a book with these opening words, Federico Pepe would have designed its cover. And if the book were made into a film, he would definitely be its writer and director. Federico is not an author, director or screenwriter, but this does not prevent him from drawing on his natural ability to create stories through flashes of imagination.Federico Pepe's career started in advertising, a family tradition, which he gradually transformed and built into many other things, in a constant, inevitable investigation of creativity in all its possible forms. He very soon understood that commission work was not enough for him, and he began to explore further afield. The first of these other fields was art, but the consolidated mechanisms on which galleries and gallery owners operate soon became a new limit from which he had to break free: this apparently expanding horizon turned out to be a restrictive cage, more a defining label than an infinite learning opportunity. And definitions are one of the things which least describe Federico: anyone trying to distil his work into two words would find its essence disappearing before their own eyes. He has occupied many roles and engaged in many professions to give shape to his ideas, and in all of them he has excelled, created and led teams, and won awards. Adman, creative director, graphic designer, printer, gallery owner, publisher, curator, performer, painter, designer, director: Pepe does, rather than is, all these. He works, builds and makes things happen because he is not led by instinct alone and does not succumb to idle whim; he does not rush aimlessly around and does not simply await the inspiration or idea of the century. Quite the opposite. His work comes about and produces results only thanks to strict self-discipline, a design method made up of constant verification, the precise sharing of tasks and roles, the compulsive exploration of unknown contexts, daily physical exercise, the carefully measured use of social media, and occasional spells of isolation in the mountains he loves. It is no coincidence that he created Le Dictateur, a dual-faced entity which may be both his child and his spiritual guide, both friend and boss, part madness and part dictator. Le Dictateur is not Federico's alter ego: it is his superpower. It is not a mask, since in it he actually transforms himself into an artistic project.Le Dictateur is both result and origin of Federico Pepe's work. "I think ideas are born from predisposition," Federico explained to me in 2014. "Not in the sense that "˜we are born predisposed,' but for daily preparation. In this domain I believe that discipline is pivotal. The real talents today are very rigorous people, those who work hard, exchange a lot, think a lot, and know how to apply and balance many different things." An approach which has made him the best-kept secret on the Italian creative scene, a fact well known not only to Pierpaolo Ferrari, Maurizio Cattelan, Nico Vascellari, Jacopo Benassi and Patricia Urquiola, but also to the companies, both large and small, which have turned to him over the years. He has worked and continues to work with them all, designing by laying the foundations of designs naturally expressed in episodes, in a serial pattern which not only gradually builds up Federico's own creative story, but also offers his clients designs so special that they would be virtually impossible without him. This self-discipline generates heat and energy in such quantities that "“ if it were not imprisoned within the geometrical grids of graphic design "“ it might generate a thermonuclear reaction. The blood running through the veins of his images is black as ink, red as sealing-wax, white as plaster and golden as lava. But there is more, too. His crystal-clear visions are able to break down the slender membrane which separates analogue from digital. He sees matter as absolutely central, but he makes it vibrate with an unusual two-dimensional quality. This can be seen in the way he carves marble with coloured squiggles, recollections of faces briefly sketched as vectors. It is discovered in the skill with which he invades plates and bowls of the finest, monitor-shiny porcelain with geometrical patterns. It becomes tangible in the love with which he brings to life the paper of his publishing projects, peopled with highly elegant, powerfully symmetrical, often kaleidoscopic graphics. It can be admired in the precision with which a metallic factory flooring becomes fabric on an ancient loom, after its resolution is decreased from 300 dpi to 8 bits. It is enjoyed in the hyperbolic repetition of faces and hands in acrylic on canvas in his painting studio, in which every work conserves copy and paste reminders of its predecessor. It amazes in the doors of exquisite metal sideboards, profane glass panels, hand-made but born through the glass of a screen. A career which has led almost naturally to an encounter with CEDIT, with whom he has created an aesthetically courageous collection, part punk and part aristocratic austerity. The Araldica project's very name evokes strength and nobility, and it is grounded in a past whose weight does not drag it backwards but rather catapults it forwards into the future. Here, Federico's digital geometries become the most solid of materials, taking shape in a graphic object, condensing stories and images into three or two dimensions. In Pepe's and CEDIT's space, Euclidean geometrical forms encounter the marble of Phidias, the intricate patterns of the floor of Milan Cathedral merge into the Baroque images of the marbles found in Roman art galleries, and private space opens out to the infinite space of a thousand possible universal histories.

Araldica Base Blu

florim > Wall Paint

The miscellany of bright, contrasting, pure colours. The manifest extroversion of decor. The solutions provided to complete the range are in a different tone: reflecting the desire to "stage" a clear contrast with the multicolour ceramic wall coverings, these slabs are in completely neutral shades, in the grey frequencies of concrete. «The collection is intended to create a struggle, a fight. Between something very stiff, which sees itself as governed by clear rules, and a variable, marbled paper, which aims to be completely free.» Federico Pepe "Once upon a time, there was a Roman emperor who lived on a huge splinter in space, a spaceship of multi-coloured marble, where techno music played incessantly. That day he left his spaceship to go to dinner at the Sun King's home, riding his sinuous golden dragon with blood-red eyes."If there were a book with these opening words, Federico Pepe would have designed its cover. And if the book were made into a film, he would definitely be its writer and director. Federico is not an author, director or screenwriter, but this does not prevent him from drawing on his natural ability to create stories through flashes of imagination.Federico Pepe's career started in advertising, a family tradition, which he gradually transformed and built into many other things, in a constant, inevitable investigation of creativity in all its possible forms. He very soon understood that commission work was not enough for him, and he began to explore further afield. The first of these other fields was art, but the consolidated mechanisms on which galleries and gallery owners operate soon became a new limit from which he had to break free: this apparently expanding horizon turned out to be a restrictive cage, more a defining label than an infinite learning opportunity. And definitions are one of the things which least describe Federico: anyone trying to distil his work into two words would find its essence disappearing before their own eyes. He has occupied many roles and engaged in many professions to give shape to his ideas, and in all of them he has excelled, created and led teams, and won awards. Adman, creative director, graphic designer, printer, gallery owner, publisher, curator, performer, painter, designer, director: Pepe does, rather than is, all these. He works, builds and makes things happen because he is not led by instinct alone and does not succumb to idle whim; he does not rush aimlessly around and does not simply await the inspiration or idea of the century. Quite the opposite. His work comes about and produces results only thanks to strict self-discipline, a design method made up of constant verification, the precise sharing of tasks and roles, the compulsive exploration of unknown contexts, daily physical exercise, the carefully measured use of social media, and occasional spells of isolation in the mountains he loves. It is no coincidence that he created Le Dictateur, a dual-faced entity which may be both his child and his spiritual guide, both friend and boss, part madness and part dictator. Le Dictateur is not Federico's alter ego: it is his superpower. It is not a mask, since in it he actually transforms himself into an artistic project.Le Dictateur is both result and origin of Federico Pepe's work. "I think ideas are born from predisposition," Federico explained to me in 2014. "Not in the sense that "˜we are born predisposed,' but for daily preparation. In this domain I believe that discipline is pivotal. The real talents today are very rigorous people, those who work hard, exchange a lot, think a lot, and know how to apply and balance many different things." An approach which has made him the best-kept secret on the Italian creative scene, a fact well known not only to Pierpaolo Ferrari, Maurizio Cattelan, Nico Vascellari, Jacopo Benassi and Patricia Urquiola, but also to the companies, both large and small, which have turned to him over the years. He has worked and continues to work with them all, designing by laying the foundations of designs naturally expressed in episodes, in a serial pattern which not only gradually builds up Federico's own creative story, but also offers his clients designs so special that they would be virtually impossible without him. This self-discipline generates heat and energy in such quantities that "“ if it were not imprisoned within the geometrical grids of graphic design "“ it might generate a thermonuclear reaction. The blood running through the veins of his images is black as ink, red as sealing-wax, white as plaster and golden as lava. But there is more, too. His crystal-clear visions are able to break down the slender membrane which separates analogue from digital. He sees matter as absolutely central, but he makes it vibrate with an unusual two-dimensional quality. This can be seen in the way he carves marble with coloured squiggles, recollections of faces briefly sketched as vectors. It is discovered in the skill with which he invades plates and bowls of the finest, monitor-shiny porcelain with geometrical patterns. It becomes tangible in the love with which he brings to life the paper of his publishing projects, peopled with highly elegant, powerfully symmetrical, often kaleidoscopic graphics. It can be admired in the precision with which a metallic factory flooring becomes fabric on an ancient loom, after its resolution is decreased from 300 dpi to 8 bits. It is enjoyed in the hyperbolic repetition of faces and hands in acrylic on canvas in his painting studio, in which every work conserves copy and paste reminders of its predecessor. It amazes in the doors of exquisite metal sideboards, profane glass panels, hand-made but born through the glass of a screen. A career which has led almost naturally to an encounter with CEDIT, with whom he has created an aesthetically courageous collection, part punk and part aristocratic austerity. The Araldica project's very name evokes strength and nobility, and it is grounded in a past whose weight does not drag it backwards but rather catapults it forwards into the future. Here, Federico's digital geometries become the most solid of materials, taking shape in a graphic object, condensing stories and images into three or two dimensions. In Pepe's and CEDIT's space, Euclidean geometrical forms encounter the marble of Phidias, the intricate patterns of the floor of Milan Cathedral merge into the Baroque images of the marbles found in Roman art galleries, and private space opens out to the infinite space of a thousand possible universal histories.

Cromatica Gradiente bianco-rosa

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Cromatica Grigio

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Araldica Base Grigio

florim > Wall Paint

The miscellany of bright, contrasting, pure colours. The manifest extroversion of decor. The solutions provided to complete the range are in a different tone: reflecting the desire to "stage" a clear contrast with the multicolour ceramic wall coverings, these slabs are in completely neutral shades, in the grey frequencies of concrete. «The collection is intended to create a struggle, a fight. Between something very stiff, which sees itself as governed by clear rules, and a variable, marbled paper, which aims to be completely free.» Federico Pepe "Once upon a time, there was a Roman emperor who lived on a huge splinter in space, a spaceship of multi-coloured marble, where techno music played incessantly. That day he left his spaceship to go to dinner at the Sun King's home, riding his sinuous golden dragon with blood-red eyes."If there were a book with these opening words, Federico Pepe would have designed its cover. And if the book were made into a film, he would definitely be its writer and director. Federico is not an author, director or screenwriter, but this does not prevent him from drawing on his natural ability to create stories through flashes of imagination.Federico Pepe's career started in advertising, a family tradition, which he gradually transformed and built into many other things, in a constant, inevitable investigation of creativity in all its possible forms. He very soon understood that commission work was not enough for him, and he began to explore further afield. The first of these other fields was art, but the consolidated mechanisms on which galleries and gallery owners operate soon became a new limit from which he had to break free: this apparently expanding horizon turned out to be a restrictive cage, more a defining label than an infinite learning opportunity. And definitions are one of the things which least describe Federico: anyone trying to distil his work into two words would find its essence disappearing before their own eyes. He has occupied many roles and engaged in many professions to give shape to his ideas, and in all of them he has excelled, created and led teams, and won awards. Adman, creative director, graphic designer, printer, gallery owner, publisher, curator, performer, painter, designer, director: Pepe does, rather than is, all these. He works, builds and makes things happen because he is not led by instinct alone and does not succumb to idle whim; he does not rush aimlessly around and does not simply await the inspiration or idea of the century. Quite the opposite. His work comes about and produces results only thanks to strict self-discipline, a design method made up of constant verification, the precise sharing of tasks and roles, the compulsive exploration of unknown contexts, daily physical exercise, the carefully measured use of social media, and occasional spells of isolation in the mountains he loves. It is no coincidence that he created Le Dictateur, a dual-faced entity which may be both his child and his spiritual guide, both friend and boss, part madness and part dictator. Le Dictateur is not Federico's alter ego: it is his superpower. It is not a mask, since in it he actually transforms himself into an artistic project.Le Dictateur is both result and origin of Federico Pepe's work. "I think ideas are born from predisposition," Federico explained to me in 2014. "Not in the sense that "˜we are born predisposed,' but for daily preparation. In this domain I believe that discipline is pivotal. The real talents today are very rigorous people, those who work hard, exchange a lot, think a lot, and know how to apply and balance many different things." An approach which has made him the best-kept secret on the Italian creative scene, a fact well known not only to Pierpaolo Ferrari, Maurizio Cattelan, Nico Vascellari, Jacopo Benassi and Patricia Urquiola, but also to the companies, both large and small, which have turned to him over the years. He has worked and continues to work with them all, designing by laying the foundations of designs naturally expressed in episodes, in a serial pattern which not only gradually builds up Federico's own creative story, but also offers his clients designs so special that they would be virtually impossible without him. This self-discipline generates heat and energy in such quantities that "“ if it were not imprisoned within the geometrical grids of graphic design "“ it might generate a thermonuclear reaction. The blood running through the veins of his images is black as ink, red as sealing-wax, white as plaster and golden as lava. But there is more, too. His crystal-clear visions are able to break down the slender membrane which separates analogue from digital. He sees matter as absolutely central, but he makes it vibrate with an unusual two-dimensional quality. This can be seen in the way he carves marble with coloured squiggles, recollections of faces briefly sketched as vectors. It is discovered in the skill with which he invades plates and bowls of the finest, monitor-shiny porcelain with geometrical patterns. It becomes tangible in the love with which he brings to life the paper of his publishing projects, peopled with highly elegant, powerfully symmetrical, often kaleidoscopic graphics. It can be admired in the precision with which a metallic factory flooring becomes fabric on an ancient loom, after its resolution is decreased from 300 dpi to 8 bits. It is enjoyed in the hyperbolic repetition of faces and hands in acrylic on canvas in his painting studio, in which every work conserves copy and paste reminders of its predecessor. It amazes in the doors of exquisite metal sideboards, profane glass panels, hand-made but born through the glass of a screen. A career which has led almost naturally to an encounter with CEDIT, with whom he has created an aesthetically courageous collection, part punk and part aristocratic austerity. The Araldica project's very name evokes strength and nobility, and it is grounded in a past whose weight does not drag it backwards but rather catapults it forwards into the future. Here, Federico's digital geometries become the most solid of materials, taking shape in a graphic object, condensing stories and images into three or two dimensions. In Pepe's and CEDIT's space, Euclidean geometrical forms encounter the marble of Phidias, the intricate patterns of the floor of Milan Cathedral merge into the Baroque images of the marbles found in Roman art galleries, and private space opens out to the infinite space of a thousand possible universal histories.

Araldica Base Azzurro

florim > Wall Paint

The miscellany of bright, contrasting, pure colours. The manifest extroversion of decor. The solutions provided to complete the range are in a different tone: reflecting the desire to "stage" a clear contrast with the multicolour ceramic wall coverings, these slabs are in completely neutral shades, in the grey frequencies of concrete. «The collection is intended to create a struggle, a fight. Between something very stiff, which sees itself as governed by clear rules, and a variable, marbled paper, which aims to be completely free.» Federico Pepe "Once upon a time, there was a Roman emperor who lived on a huge splinter in space, a spaceship of multi-coloured marble, where techno music played incessantly. That day he left his spaceship to go to dinner at the Sun King's home, riding his sinuous golden dragon with blood-red eyes."If there were a book with these opening words, Federico Pepe would have designed its cover. And if the book were made into a film, he would definitely be its writer and director. Federico is not an author, director or screenwriter, but this does not prevent him from drawing on his natural ability to create stories through flashes of imagination.Federico Pepe's career started in advertising, a family tradition, which he gradually transformed and built into many other things, in a constant, inevitable investigation of creativity in all its possible forms. He very soon understood that commission work was not enough for him, and he began to explore further afield. The first of these other fields was art, but the consolidated mechanisms on which galleries and gallery owners operate soon became a new limit from which he had to break free: this apparently expanding horizon turned out to be a restrictive cage, more a defining label than an infinite learning opportunity. And definitions are one of the things which least describe Federico: anyone trying to distil his work into two words would find its essence disappearing before their own eyes. He has occupied many roles and engaged in many professions to give shape to his ideas, and in all of them he has excelled, created and led teams, and won awards. Adman, creative director, graphic designer, printer, gallery owner, publisher, curator, performer, painter, designer, director: Pepe does, rather than is, all these. He works, builds and makes things happen because he is not led by instinct alone and does not succumb to idle whim; he does not rush aimlessly around and does not simply await the inspiration or idea of the century. Quite the opposite. His work comes about and produces results only thanks to strict self-discipline, a design method made up of constant verification, the precise sharing of tasks and roles, the compulsive exploration of unknown contexts, daily physical exercise, the carefully measured use of social media, and occasional spells of isolation in the mountains he loves. It is no coincidence that he created Le Dictateur, a dual-faced entity which may be both his child and his spiritual guide, both friend and boss, part madness and part dictator. Le Dictateur is not Federico's alter ego: it is his superpower. It is not a mask, since in it he actually transforms himself into an artistic project.Le Dictateur is both result and origin of Federico Pepe's work. "I think ideas are born from predisposition," Federico explained to me in 2014. "Not in the sense that "˜we are born predisposed,' but for daily preparation. In this domain I believe that discipline is pivotal. The real talents today are very rigorous people, those who work hard, exchange a lot, think a lot, and know how to apply and balance many different things." An approach which has made him the best-kept secret on the Italian creative scene, a fact well known not only to Pierpaolo Ferrari, Maurizio Cattelan, Nico Vascellari, Jacopo Benassi and Patricia Urquiola, but also to the companies, both large and small, which have turned to him over the years. He has worked and continues to work with them all, designing by laying the foundations of designs naturally expressed in episodes, in a serial pattern which not only gradually builds up Federico's own creative story, but also offers his clients designs so special that they would be virtually impossible without him. This self-discipline generates heat and energy in such quantities that "“ if it were not imprisoned within the geometrical grids of graphic design "“ it might generate a thermonuclear reaction. The blood running through the veins of his images is black as ink, red as sealing-wax, white as plaster and golden as lava. But there is more, too. His crystal-clear visions are able to break down the slender membrane which separates analogue from digital. He sees matter as absolutely central, but he makes it vibrate with an unusual two-dimensional quality. This can be seen in the way he carves marble with coloured squiggles, recollections of faces briefly sketched as vectors. It is discovered in the skill with which he invades plates and bowls of the finest, monitor-shiny porcelain with geometrical patterns. It becomes tangible in the love with which he brings to life the paper of his publishing projects, peopled with highly elegant, powerfully symmetrical, often kaleidoscopic graphics. It can be admired in the precision with which a metallic factory flooring becomes fabric on an ancient loom, after its resolution is decreased from 300 dpi to 8 bits. It is enjoyed in the hyperbolic repetition of faces and hands in acrylic on canvas in his painting studio, in which every work conserves copy and paste reminders of its predecessor. It amazes in the doors of exquisite metal sideboards, profane glass panels, hand-made but born through the glass of a screen. A career which has led almost naturally to an encounter with CEDIT, with whom he has created an aesthetically courageous collection, part punk and part aristocratic austerity. The Araldica project's very name evokes strength and nobility, and it is grounded in a past whose weight does not drag it backwards but rather catapults it forwards into the future. Here, Federico's digital geometries become the most solid of materials, taking shape in a graphic object, condensing stories and images into three or two dimensions. In Pepe's and CEDIT's space, Euclidean geometrical forms encounter the marble of Phidias, the intricate patterns of the floor of Milan Cathedral merge into the Baroque images of the marbles found in Roman art galleries, and private space opens out to the infinite space of a thousand possible universal histories.

Cromatica Cobalto

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Cromatica Cenere

florim > Synthetic Floor

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Cromatica Verde

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Cromatica Opale

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Cromatica Bianco

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Araldica Cemento

florim > Wallcovering

The miscellany of bright, contrasting, pure colours. The manifest extroversion of decor. The solutions provided to complete the range are in a different tone: reflecting the desire to "stage" a clear contrast with the multicolour ceramic wall coverings, these slabs are in completely neutral shades, in the grey frequencies of concrete. «The collection is intended to create a struggle, a fight. Between something very stiff, which sees itself as governed by clear rules, and a variable, marbled paper, which aims to be completely free.» Federico Pepe "Once upon a time, there was a Roman emperor who lived on a huge splinter in space, a spaceship of multi-coloured marble, where techno music played incessantly. That day he left his spaceship to go to dinner at the Sun King's home, riding his sinuous golden dragon with blood-red eyes."If there were a book with these opening words, Federico Pepe would have designed its cover. And if the book were made into a film, he would definitely be its writer and director. Federico is not an author, director or screenwriter, but this does not prevent him from drawing on his natural ability to create stories through flashes of imagination.Federico Pepe's career started in advertising, a family tradition, which he gradually transformed and built into many other things, in a constant, inevitable investigation of creativity in all its possible forms. He very soon understood that commission work was not enough for him, and he began to explore further afield. The first of these other fields was art, but the consolidated mechanisms on which galleries and gallery owners operate soon became a new limit from which he had to break free: this apparently expanding horizon turned out to be a restrictive cage, more a defining label than an infinite learning opportunity. And definitions are one of the things which least describe Federico: anyone trying to distil his work into two words would find its essence disappearing before their own eyes. He has occupied many roles and engaged in many professions to give shape to his ideas, and in all of them he has excelled, created and led teams, and won awards. Adman, creative director, graphic designer, printer, gallery owner, publisher, curator, performer, painter, designer, director: Pepe does, rather than is, all these. He works, builds and makes things happen because he is not led by instinct alone and does not succumb to idle whim; he does not rush aimlessly around and does not simply await the inspiration or idea of the century. Quite the opposite. His work comes about and produces results only thanks to strict self-discipline, a design method made up of constant verification, the precise sharing of tasks and roles, the compulsive exploration of unknown contexts, daily physical exercise, the carefully measured use of social media, and occasional spells of isolation in the mountains he loves. It is no coincidence that he created Le Dictateur, a dual-faced entity which may be both his child and his spiritual guide, both friend and boss, part madness and part dictator. Le Dictateur is not Federico's alter ego: it is his superpower. It is not a mask, since in it he actually transforms himself into an artistic project.Le Dictateur is both result and origin of Federico Pepe's work. "I think ideas are born from predisposition," Federico explained to me in 2014. "Not in the sense that "˜we are born predisposed,' but for daily preparation. In this domain I believe that discipline is pivotal. The real talents today are very rigorous people, those who work hard, exchange a lot, think a lot, and know how to apply and balance many different things." An approach which has made him the best-kept secret on the Italian creative scene, a fact well known not only to Pierpaolo Ferrari, Maurizio Cattelan, Nico Vascellari, Jacopo Benassi and Patricia Urquiola, but also to the companies, both large and small, which have turned to him over the years. He has worked and continues to work with them all, designing by laying the foundations of designs naturally expressed in episodes, in a serial pattern which not only gradually builds up Federico's own creative story, but also offers his clients designs so special that they would be virtually impossible without him. This self-discipline generates heat and energy in such quantities that "“ if it were not imprisoned within the geometrical grids of graphic design "“ it might generate a thermonuclear reaction. The blood running through the veins of his images is black as ink, red as sealing-wax, white as plaster and golden as lava. But there is more, too. His crystal-clear visions are able to break down the slender membrane which separates analogue from digital. He sees matter as absolutely central, but he makes it vibrate with an unusual two-dimensional quality. This can be seen in the way he carves marble with coloured squiggles, recollections of faces briefly sketched as vectors. It is discovered in the skill with which he invades plates and bowls of the finest, monitor-shiny porcelain with geometrical patterns. It becomes tangible in the love with which he brings to life the paper of his publishing projects, peopled with highly elegant, powerfully symmetrical, often kaleidoscopic graphics. It can be admired in the precision with which a metallic factory flooring becomes fabric on an ancient loom, after its resolution is decreased from 300 dpi to 8 bits. It is enjoyed in the hyperbolic repetition of faces and hands in acrylic on canvas in his painting studio, in which every work conserves copy and paste reminders of its predecessor. It amazes in the doors of exquisite metal sideboards, profane glass panels, hand-made but born through the glass of a screen. A career which has led almost naturally to an encounter with CEDIT, with whom he has created an aesthetically courageous collection, part punk and part aristocratic austerity. The Araldica project's very name evokes strength and nobility, and it is grounded in a past whose weight does not drag it backwards but rather catapults it forwards into the future. Here, Federico's digital geometries become the most solid of materials, taking shape in a graphic object, condensing stories and images into three or two dimensions. In Pepe's and CEDIT's space, Euclidean geometrical forms encounter the marble of Phidias, the intricate patterns of the floor of Milan Cathedral merge into the Baroque images of the marbles found in Roman art galleries, and private space opens out to the infinite space of a thousand possible universal histories.

Cromatica Gradiente grigio-verde

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

Cromatica Rosa

florim > Wall Paint

A lexicon of colour shades for mixing. A large size and its submultiples. «This work represents a reflection on colour, and above all a proposal on how to transfer the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a project produced on a large scale.» Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin Studio Formafantasma base their work in the design world on a strong vocation for research. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi view every project as an opportunity for study and the acquisition of new knowledge, and their love of speculation establishes a dialectic rapport with the situations offered by each new client. Whether it involves a material, a type or a production method, the first phase of their design process is the mapping of what the specific case places at their disposal. With Cedit, an analysis of the company's past and present was central to the inputs. Inevitably, since "Looking back to look forward" has been the design duo's mission statement for years. In this case, in particular, the company's history was a real treasure trove, a fine blend of memory and technology: on the one hand, the excellence of production technologies now extended with the added potential arising from the engineering of large-sized ceramic tiles, and on the other a wealth of experience build up with great designers of the past, from Zanuso to Noorda, through to Ettore Sottsass. Andrea and Simone decided to focus on Sottsass - who started designing for Cedit back in the late Seventies - and made an in-depth study of one of the colour charts he developed towards the end of the Nineties. A spread of colours which gave its name to the "41 Colors" collection, included in the catalogue of the period as a real alphabet for what has proved to be a lasting design language. Colour was much more than just a compulsory step in the dialogue between designer and producer, since Sottsass had already discovered the power of the mystery intrinsic to this universe of invention. With Cedit the master-designer, a long-established lover of ceramics and their crafted unpredictability, found a way of transferring his personal feeling for colour to a wide audience, through industrial mass production. And this assumption is another factor Formafantasma have inherited, interpreting it today with new, even more efficient technical resources just as capable of expressing the secrets of colour. «The concept of colour "in isolation" - Sottsass explained in a 1992 text - classified colour, Pantone, as they call it now, "scientific" colour, is something I still refuse to accept. (...) Colours, the idea of colour, are always intangible, they slip slowly away like words, that run through your fingers, like poetry, which you can never keep hold of, like a good story.» And Formafantasma seem to have chosen that distinction between colour "in isolation" and "intangible" yet ever-present colour as the basis of their work. However, their approach draws on their unique vocation for research and the technical resources of the third millennium. «This work - they explain to us - is a reflection on colour, and above all on how to bring the multiplicity of shades typical of a hand-crafted piece into a large-scale project.» The designers look at large, monochrome slabs and turn to the engineers for details of their secrets, their processing stages, the phases in their production. They appreciate that the colour of ceramic material, its ineffable secret, can still be present in the series and large tile sizes in which Cedit leads the way. They understand that this is, in itself, an expressive power which does not need channelling into forms, motifs and signs. But above all, they treat the surface as a large canvas on which they spread pure colour, which tends to be uniform but in fact is never really a "scientific", totally monochrome hue: it is not a Pantone. And this is the source of the fundamental insight, which only children of the transition from the analogue to the digital era could achieve, the reward for those who draw on the past to look to the future. The designers cut the slab into lots of regular pieces, not necessarily of the same size. They restore its identity as a "tile", a familiar name with something ancient about it, but which stands for a module, a unit of measurement, a building block. There is nothing nostalgic about this - on the contrary, the vision is completely new, and the portions of slab created can be reassembled with no restrictions, breaking down the unity of the whole and reviving its essence starting from its structure. As the cards in the pack are shuffled, what emerges is not a figure or motif but the representation of colour itself and its physical nature. It is live matter, born from the meeting of vibrating forces, the mixing of ever-varying percentages of the basic ingredients. And Formafantasma present us with the corpuscular, fragmented essence of these small frames of space and crystallised time, which reveal the code and formula of their composition. So Cromatica is a collection made up of six colours which actually have an infinite number of declinations and compositional possibilities. It is a "discrete" combination in the mathematical sense of the term, capable of generating multiple, variable subsets. At the same time, each slab can be used in its entirety, leaving the impression of analogue continuity unchanged. But what really amazes is the comparison and dialogue between the two approaches: a stroke of genius, laying clear the mysterious appeal the artificial reproduction of colour has always held for mankind. Because, as Sottsass said, «colours are language, a powerful, magical, intangible, flexible, continuous material, in which existence is made manifest, the existence that lives in time and space».

CONVEX - LED pendant lamp _ BROKIS

BROKIS > Ceiling lamp