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LEA CERAMICHE, Type 32 L’ipermateriale di Diego Grandi è invece dato dalla sovrapposizione di due layer: una serigrafia che riproduce il legno
e un decoro basato sulla reiterazione della linea obliqua, disponibile in quattro pattern, combinabili in una superficie potenzialmente infinita. Nuovo anche
per il formato: anziché quello tradizionale, si utilizza la doga lunga Slimtech (20x200cm) nello spessore di 5,5 mm.
This hyper-material designed by Diego Grandi has two superimposed layers: a screen-printed upper layer reproducing a wood effect and a decoration based
on repeated oblique lines, available in four patterns, and combinable
to create a surface of unlimited size.
The new formats are based on the long, 5.5 mm-thick Slimtech slat (20x200cm). www.ceramichelea.com
Digital technology is approaching perfection
in its ability to imitate wood, marble and stone. Ceramic manufacturing, we might say,
has come of age. We can carry out an almost philological reading of materials in terms
of their continuing evolution in these ways.
Last year Marazzi presented “Blend”,
a forerunner of these “hyper-materials” that represent invention, the new frontier, a major trend to get to grips with, one that crosses
over with those which are purely imitative. Stoneware is being stratified both graphically and structurally, with the inclusion of different materials – wood, cement, granules – to produce surfaces which (somewhat unsettlingly) do not exist in nature, and can become estranged, reorganised and reinvented with great creativity. The corpus of material is essentially the same – stoneware imitating stone –
but there are many different, independent and often unconventional expressions of this basic idea, with each firm giving its own personal interpretation of the material. There are,
after all, no models to imitate, and no specific
objectives to be reached. The uniqueness
of the design is determined in each case by the physical properties of the material and the ways in which it can be worked using a combination of manufacturing processes, including digital techniques (an infinite number of patterns
and colours are now possible in graphic detail) and rotocolor (where the product takes
on a three-dimensional quality according
to how the light hits it). Parallel to this, research is being done into shapes and sizes. Different forms are now possible, not just squares and rectangles, although these will continue to be produced. Experiments are being made with large hexagonal formats and other interlocking geometric forms. This clearly opens up endless possibilities, especially
for the outer skins of buildings, ventilated walls, cladding and lagging, for which large-sized panels are now generally used (even measuring more than 300x100 cm). This is essentially about creative freedom, the kind of freedom found in architectural design. It’s a ceramic project which has opened up in a radical way