Today the Fuorisalone has officially opened in Milan, and within the area “From earth to the Earth” created by Refin Ceramics and DesignTaleStudio in the courtyard opposite the Triennale, an event of great interest for all architects and designers interested in eco-sustainability will take place. It’s a cocktail evening, called “Sustainable Project”, which sees the attendance of Marco Zoccatelli (president of the Green Building Council Italy), Paolo Tamborrini (professor at the Politecnico in Turin) and Davide Carra (in charge of Quality Systems at the Gruppo Concorde). The focus of the event will be the role of companies, designers and certifying bodies in bio-architecture and sustainable design. The event will start at 19:00 CET, and registration is required.

Meanwhile yesterday morning a press preview reserved for journalists took place, with the participation of Michele De Lucchi, the designer of the “From earth to the Earth” area. Representatives from many important newspapers were present and interviewed the managers of Refin and De Lucchi for almost two hours, with De Lucchi giving a brief, but very interesting speech illustrating the conceptual assumption behind his design and its connection with ceramics. We will soon upload a video of the interview. For now, here are a few photos of the morning.

Here is the text Michele De Lucchi wrote for the “Dalla terra alla Terra” (”From earth to the Earth”) installation, that will be held at the Milan Triennale during Fuorisalone 2009.

Ceramic is a marvellous material, not only as it is functional, cosy, solid, long-lasting, resistant, natural and eco-friendly, but also because it is earth. The earth is all we have and it is, both physically and metaphorically, our most precious material. Ceramic can create surfaces featuring any colour or finish and it allows for countless combinations of decors, natural imitations and creative geometries.

Too often though, we associate ceramic tiles exclusively with wall and floor coverings and too often we forget the majesty of this material, using it only to keep, unaltered over time, the welcoming feeling of a tile covered wall or flooring. But, a ceramic tile is earth, therefore it is an excellent building material, the best, the most versatile building material of all and thanks to this evocative quality, our tall and slender buildings came to life, as do our thoughts which fly high in the sky.

Thus, this rigid ceramic tile becomes a new material, rich in suggestions and hints, which take us by the hand into a new era, where ceramic cladding is not simply a mere covering skin but a marvellous material which, sprung from earth, brings all of us, contemporary man, back to the Earth.

Exactly a week to go before the opening of the Fuorisalone exhibition, or more specifically, before the press preview where we will reveal the set design for “From earth to the Earth”, in the courtyard opposite the Triennale, created by Michele de Lucchi exclusively for Ceramiche Refin. During this preview, scheduled to start at 10.30, architect de Lucchi in person will explain his work and the key-concept driving his creativity, that is to say, the intimate and enduring tie between nature and ceramics.

During the Fourisalone exhibition there will be plenty of time set aside on this theme within our set design. On Refin’s web-site, you can see the landing page showing the detailed schedule of events and the registration form, while, in the next day or two our blog will provide further details and teasers of the event.

The Fuorisalone 2009 is approaching and once again this year the event, taking place between April 22 to 27, will see Milan as the world capital of design. Refin Ceramiche and DesignTaleStudio will be present in the courtyard opposite the Triennale, with a set-design centred around the innovative use of ceramic.

This year, our set-design will be created by Michele De Lucchi: a renowned in the world of design, he needs no introduction, he has joined us again, after a gap of 2 years, with a project entitled “From earth to the Earth”. For now, we will not reveal any more details of the project but we promise to reveal all with new in-depth and tasters of the event.

In March, architects and designers reach fever pitch: the count-down to the Salone del Mobile exhibition in Milan starts, probably the most important event of our sector, world-wide. The anticipation is focused on the events and ephemeral settings of the Fuorisalone, in the Tortona district and of the Triennale. Last year, we created Design On Stage, a “design lounge” designed by Laura Villani opposite the Triennale, with the participation of many guests, such as Elio Fiorucci, Michele De Lucchi, Karim Rashid, Satyendra Pakhalé and Sandra Bermudez, each one the designer of a ceramic slab prototype for DTS.

And this year? We will be there again, don’t worry. Would you like some “teasers”? We will be once again in the square opposite the Triennale with a new setting by Laura Villani, with Claudio Porcarelli’s photographic set and an intriguing theme: creativity as transgression. Among the protagonists, we will have a legend of the Italian design and two international fashion-designers…..all of them famous “transgressors”.

Keep an eye on the blog, we will reveal more in the next few days…

Within the Catalogue section of Designtalestudio.com we have recently opened a brand-new section called Prototypes d’Autore, in which we have grouped all the ceramic slab projects that we developed in collaboration with famous artists and designers. We have called them “prototypes”, as they haven’t been produced yet although they have been available to show only during special events, such as Design On Stage at the Triennale exhibition in Milan in April 2007 or the forthcoming Grand Design Tour taking place in Bologna from October 3 to 6 2007.

Amongst the Prototypes d’Autore you will eventually see the complete series of drawings by Karim Rashid and Peter Halley; Elio Fiorucci’s “lips”; Michele De Lucchi’s totem; the crushed paper by Sandra Bermudez; Lucio Dalla’s fish and Romina Power’s Tao.

The main problem we came across while setting-up the “Meta Design” exhibition, was that of doing justice to the sheer beauty brought to the real world by DesignTaleSudio’s ceramics. The Pareti d’Autore where meant to be main cladding surface and works of art all at the same time, therefore, they had to, without compromise, “stand out” the best way possible.

The majority of the interior floors and wall-tiles we see on Second Life fall into two categories: the “ordinary” ones (flat surfaces, characterised by a feel of “comfortable” minimalism and with no basic aesthetic research) and the “grotesque” (textures which struggle to emulate real materials such as parquet, marble and stone with the use of photographic images). At the moment, perhaps the most interesting creations are those which use semi-transparent, opaque material, such as large, slightly reflective windows or plastic panels.

Ceramic has proven still difficult to use on Second Life, but with a bit of extra effort we believe we managed a better result than expected. In our opinion, the concept of the traditional ceramic tile as we know it, that is to say, a small glazed tile, is verging to grotesque, especially when the surface is reflective and the installation pattern conveys a very “grid-like” effect. The result is a kind of mural of identical repeated images where the real-life luminous qualities of the tile are reduced to whitish geometric shapes, mechanically repeated in an un-natural way. With larger sizes the same problem is slightly reduced though still visible: it is therefore better to use opaque products where graphics outshine the tactile and visual effects of the material.

Various slabs designed by famous personalities, such as those of Rashid, Fiorucci and Bermudez, actually did have these very characteristics and it was therefore relatively easy to display them effectively. But it was a different story for the totem designed by De Lucchi and, especially, the DesignTaleStudio’s Pareti d’Autore, whose light and material effects of the three-dimensional surface had to be reproduced. The solution we came up with was to use photographs of the products whose reflections had been partially reduced. In the case of De Lucchi’s work, the surface of the slabs was a single image, previously created with Photoshop by delaying the overall light of the original “amateurish” photo taken during the Design On Stage exhibition. But the Pareti d’Autore, especially the overly iridescent “unphotographable” ones like the Gold and Platinum, worked better if used as decoration rather than repeated backdrop. After being slightly retouched via computer and loaded on Second Life with the maximum resolution possible, the images from afar recaptured all the energy of the original designs while the close-up showed the fascination of their softness to the touch and light.

The “100% Design” exhibition in Rotterdam is approaching, an “inspiring event” for the European interior design, for many years the union between the most innovative companies and “Design-oriented” people.
In this context, Refin and its creative lab DesignTaleStudio has to be there: following the successful presence at the Triennale in Milan, the Pareti d’Autore will be showcased in Holland, one of the coolest and avant-garde stages for new trends.
The protagonists on Refin and DesignTaleStudio’s stand will be the Pareti d’Autore and in particular, the latest offering, the Gold and Platinum Collection. Amongst the many Pareti d’Autore present in Rotterdam, the work designed by architect Michele De Lucchi, one the most famous Italian designer, is the most notable.
Milan-born, Michele De Lucchi joins the DesignTaleStudio team on the occasion of the Triennale event in his home town where his “Totem” covered with the Pareti d’Autore, has been one of the most admired work for its strong visual impact.
This “Totem” will be displayed also in Rotterdam on Refin’s stand to evoke the strong link between DesignTaleStudio and the Design elite.
Refin and DesignTaleStudio wait for you at 100% Design, June 7-9, Stand S17!

Yesterday was the turn of architect Michele De Lucchi, who has spent 3 decades as one of the protagonists of the design elite on a world-wide scale. Once again he captivated everyone present with his charisma and personality.

During the discussion, De Lucchi touched upon numerous interesting themes, often with “strong” and provocative statements. He spoke of the designer as a “builder of identity”, a fundamental role in today’s multi-cultural society, and for the need to have an experimental approach to planning even at the risk of harassing the constraints imposed by industry and the market. He confessed his passion for the “craftsmanship” of wood, paid homage to his two “Homeric masters” “Ettore” (Sottsass) and “Achille” (Castiglioni), two figures from a completely opposed intellectual flair for design.

Today, in the space dedicated to Design On Stage at the Triennale of Milano, Karim Rashid will be the guest. The meeting will be at 18.00 (and details will be on the blog tomorrow).