The luxury of porcelain stoneware for exteriors

The elegance of floor and wall covering materials, when applied to the land, is not expressed through decorative excess or through repeated proposition of historic patterns, but through their amalgamation with their surroundings.

For if an architectural element is to be congenial to its purpose and capture the outdoors, the design of the land around it must reflect the same properties, interacting with built volumes. We can approach this subject on two levels: residential and public projects. In the former, homes are surrounded by gardens, patios, swimming pools and arcades: spaces where covering materials seek to establish dialogue between the architectural construction and the land.
In the same way, but on a different scale, a public square, entrance hall, park, pool of water or viewpoint uses materials in harmony between the natural space and the public building overlooking it. If we take a closer look it will be clear that there is in actual fact no substantial difference in the approach to these two types of construction, because in both cases, the dialogue and harmony created by exterior covering materials lies at the origin of their continuity with the building's interior.

This new form of luxury is free of ostentation, discrete and precious, belonging to the world of the earth in its most authentic expression, especially when used to cover surfaces.

Materials are therefore a discriminating factor in creating an elegant path leading up to a building. In our case, the ability of porcelain stoneware to blend into its surroundings, its technical qualities and its solid colouring offer a discrete solution, entirely free of ostentation, capable of adding elegance to the typical forms of landscape architecture.
To take a closer look at the first of the three properties of porcelain stoneware and fully appreciate its ability to establish harmony between the natural and the artificial, we might consider Stonepeak's Quartzite collection for indoor and outdoor flooring, in which the material's ability to blend into its surroundings with the hues of its surfaces allows it to adapt to the land and capture the most recondite chiaroscuro atmospheres. This is porcelain stoneware capable of declaring elegance in its role as discrete intermediary between architecture and the land.

The second important feature of this covering material, its technical properties and impermeability to all liquids, making it frost-proof, unbreakable and non-slip, can be best seen in GranitiFiandre's Geologica New Co.De Line.

In this case the pleasant rough-hewn surfaces and the colours of nature reveal the material's technical strength. Its simplicity does not signify renunciation of a starring role, but rather the direct intention of acting as a hinge between indoors and outdoors, the material marking the boundary of living spaces defined as all the spaces that humans use.

Products Mentioned

Stonepeak
Technical porcelain stoneware for indoor and outdoor flooring.

GranitiFiandre
Porcelain Stoneware: High-tech Ceramics and Tiles for Interior Design - Fiandre

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