Floors are a key to the design of public places, not only because their qualities of strength and firmness solve many issues with stress and pollution but because their appearance has an ability to define the social identity of spaces.
Use of porcelain floor and wall coverings is the ideal answer in all kinds of public spaces: places requiring surfaces that are practical while offering the indispensable added value of attractiveness and evocative and semantic power. Porcelain tiles are normally considered the best solution for indoor flooring, but the intrinsic qualities of this particular ceramic material also make it perfect for outdoor surfaces requiring special performance, so that porcelain tiles are of key importance in today’s surfaces. Public places are by definition sites of community living which are directly linked with the outdoors and therefore subject to stress, exposure and pollution.
Urban environments in particular are characterised by a high frequency of pedestrian traffic with frequent passage of mechanical vehicles, the presence of various chemical agents (and above all moisture and dust) as well as contact and possible scratching with other materials. Outdoor porcelain floor tiles can solve a lot of these issues with their compactness (after all, they are called "full-body") and above all their resistance to stress, and the lightfastness of their colours. GranitiFiandre boasts a series of prestigious projects for public spaces (theatres, schools and academies, sports centres, churches, museums, multiplex cinemas...) which start precisely with the qualities of porcelain to add further aesthetic significance (the semantic aspect) to individual projects.
A truly important formal transition that starts with the decorative aspect to arrive at more architectural applications of high-tech porcelain tiles, such as, for example: the Imperial War Museum in London, where Pietra Serena (30x30) is used; Leòn Jimenes Cultural Centre in Santiago (Dominican Republic), with Pietra Ardesia (60x30), also used in the Congress Centre at the Trade Fair in Frankfurt and in a shopping centre project in Laval, Canada.
All these GranitiFiandre porcelain tiles belong to the Geologica Collection, a line of products with pleasing veins designed specifically to "guarantee outstanding performance in residential projects, the contract sector and major retail facilities". But, as we have seen, the features of a ceramic product such as porcelain are not limited to the performance deriving from innovations in technology and construction; its veins and colours can touch, suggest, study and convey sensations, relationships and sharing.
These are all aspects of great importance in the home, and even more so in public buildings, where the overall atmosphere and social feel are important keys to design and the common denominator of all public projects; in this context porcelain tiles have a key contribution to make to forming a place’s "social" identity.
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