11-02-2020

Great Metastone: technical performance and aesthetic quality for maxi-slabs

Style:Design, contemporary, stile metropolitano,

TAGS:Porcelaingres, Iris Ceramica Group,

Ceramic maxi-slabs are now a well-established feature of architecture and renovation projects, one of the most popular new trends in interior design. Their flexibility and light weight also allows them to be used as original components in custom-made furnishings. Strength and beauty come together in products such as Great Metastone by Porcelaingres, which expresses a bold character through the cold hues and delicate shading of its textured surface

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The key trends in the principal construction trade fairs for interior and exterior design of the home of 2020 offer plenty of new colours, finishes and textures for surface coverings.

The world of contemporary surfaces increasingly abounds in creativity, with original design solutions for custom-designed spaces.

One clear example is contemporary reinterpretation of “old-fashioned” materials (such as velvet, wallpaper, and coloured glass, to mention only a few).

Along with the revival of these traditional materials, home design trends have once again seen an expansion of the range of ceramic surfaces available on the market thanks to the ongoing evolution of high-tech porcelain.

It is above all large sizes that attract designers, for whom maxi-slabs offer an answer to a number of architectural requirements and issues, particularly in renovation projects.

When renovating a building while maintaining a part of the existing construction, porcelain maxi-slabs make a clear contribution to improvement of the functional conversion and perceived value of spaces, thanks to the material’s extreme flexibility and undeniable aesthetic qualities.

In designing comfortable, sustainable, technologically advanced spaces, maxi-slabs permit optimisation of a number of key aspects such as brightness, strength and easy cleaning.

The Iris Ceramica Group is a world leader in the design, production and distribution of top-of-the-range ceramic products for residential, commercial and industrial projects.

Maxi-slabs are one of the Iris Ceramica Group’s key strong points, an innovative solution permitting creation of uninterrupted surfaces measuring up to 4.5 sqm (3 x 1.5 m) per slab and only 6 millimetres thick.

This unit has "offered the market a new concept of architectural surfaces that goes beyond traditional ceramics to reinvent design criteria, with a product that offers maximum freedom and minimum restrictions".

In aesthetic terms, maxi-slabs permit customisation of walls and floors with effects recalling natural materials such as marble, stone, granite, resins as well as countless varieties of wood.

Moreover, maxi-slabs have expanded the potential applications of the material to include use as a true item of furniture, creating tables, sliding doors, ceilings, kitchen and bathroom countertops, partitions and backlit wall panels.

Porcelaingres is an Iris Ceramica Group brand based in Vetschau, Germany and Castellarano, Italy, in the world’s most important ceramic manufacturing district, Sassuolo.

The numerous collections produced by Porcelaingres include Great Metastone, adding new textures to the company’s range of maxi-slabs.

The collection’s name declares what makes it different: the Greek word Mèta refers to a process of “change and transformation", which is the feature characterising this surface: "the texture is in fact inspired by the meeting of different surfaces which are superimposed like lightweight veils, permitting glimpses of the layer below to create a new kind of structure".

Stone is the key material inspiring the collection, reinterpreted with a contemporary twist to create a structured surface with a wealth of detail.

As we have seen, Great Metastone is available in 300x100 cm and 150x100 cm maxi-slabs and in the new 100x100 cm size, with a thickness of only 6 mm, so that the slab is as light as it is strong. This light weight makes it a very flexible material for covering either walls or floors as well as a covering solution for a great variety of items of furniture.

Available in four colours, Black Demer, Grey Namur, Silver Mons and White Bree, Great Metastone is one of this year’s trendy new surfaces, featuring the effects created by a variety of cold colours, underlining its bold, original character with delicate tone-on-tone variations in hue.

Marco Privato

GALLERY