Design development

Studio Urquiola approached us to create eight colourful Encaustic Tiles with ‘fluid’ patterns and lots of variation.

We started by exploring how to translate colours from digital renders into ceramics, developing a series of pigment recipes to achieve each colour.

Block making is the foundation of colour and pattern in Encaustic Tile making. We experimented with hand-marbled and striped clay patterns alongside solid colours, developing a ratio between the three elements that would make up each block. We randomly combined the three elements, creating variation throughout the block and from tile to tile.

Ram pressing Encaustic Tiles generates offcuts as excess clay is forced out of the plaster die. We layered these offcuts onto the face of the next clay slices, adding another layer of variation to individual patterns and across the finished floor.

Production

Handmade in Liverpool, we produced 6,750 ceramic tiles for a feature floor at Casa CABan HAYAMA. The tiles are made from a recycled vitrified clay body containing 72% ceramic industry waste filtered from factory wastewater.

Clay blocks are made up of marbled, striped and solid colours in a range of tones. We randomly combine differently coloured clays to form each block. The blocks are then sliced and pressed into tiles in a 60T hydraulic ram press.

This process allowed us to produce tiles at scale while retaining fluid shifts in colour and pattern from one tile to the next.

All Casa CABan HAYAMA photography courtesy of TomorrowLand