Tile Trial: Shadowplay
I'm at Cersaie, the international tile exhibition in Bologna, and I can't tell you how many amazing products are debuting--far too many for us to see in the three days we have, much less the first day (today). One exhibition at the fair, Green Street, where landscape meets architecture, was unveiled today. ExpoGreen and Cersaie collaborated, inviting architects and designers to use tile to design artful furnishings and structures in order to draw attention to environmental issues. The Doppia Coppia chair by Riccardo Blumer was my pick for Chair Chick because the textural "house of tile cards" caught and played with Bologna's bright afternoon sunlight. Blumer said of his design: "I cherished the idea of working on the tile perceived as a stand-alone element, not just an ornament, free from any support glues or binder: just the tile itself. To that purpose, we cut the tiles in order to create joints which allowed us to fit them in orthogonal lines, like an endless assembly game. Such a game can vary in size depending on the number of pieces and your fancy for playing. In this contest we had to submit to the 'limited scope' of the Triennale."
