Cersaie 2023. Side Stone collection by Lea Ceramiche – Photo by Lea Ceramiche.

Design – Archipanic’s Editor-in-Chief Enrico Zilli travelled to Bologna, Italy, to explore Cersaie 2023, the most influential fair dedicated to ceramic tile and bathroom furnishing that turns 40 this year. Check the surface design collections we liked the most.

• RELATED STORIES: Discover more eclectic surface design on Archipanic.

Water surfaces rippled by the wind

Windy collection by Nendo x Decoratori Bassanesi – Photo by Masahiro Ohgami, courtesy of Decoratori Bassanesi.

Decoratori Bassanesi presents the Windy collection by Japanese studio Nendo, which drew inspiration from the wind, its natural force, and the patterns etched by its poetic dances. This collection’s drawings and textures capture “the wind’s essence and movement as it ripples and swirls on water or across rice paddies and grasslands, creating unexpected, imprecise, yet harmonious shapes.” Explain Oki Sato, founder of Nendo.

Wax’s feel

Cera collection by Ceramiche Refin – Photo by Ceramiche Refin.

The Cera collection by Refin draws inspiration from wax – Cera in Italian – translating the organic material’s visual and tactile sensations onto ceramic tiles. To recreate wax’s plasticity, the company’s tiles designer elaborated a graphic pattern with great depth, where small cracks, cavities and traces recall the effect resulting from wax’s casting and subsequent solidification. A specially developed surface finish adds a soft and silky tactile effect.

Graphic and tactile furrows from the Amalfi coast

Solchi Tattile collection by Rasna Studio x Ma.Vi Ceramica – Photo by Ma.Vi. Ceramica.

Furrows dug by ploughs, kids’ patterns on the sand, and primitive engravings inspired the graphic and tactile Solchi collection by Roberto Ambrosino e Carmen Avagliano of Rasna Studio for Ma.Vi Ceramica. Straight and curvy lines allow architects and interior designers to create endless compositions exploring traditional ceramics techniques. Based in Vietri on the Amalfi Coast, the Italian company harnesses Vietri’s renowned craftsmanship and local heritage to break new ground and walk serendipitous design paths.

Dynamic patterns by Zaha Hadid Architects

Marvel Meraviglia by Zaha Hadid Architects x Atlas Concorde – © Zaha Hadid Limited 2023, courtesy of Atlas Concorde.

Atlas Concorde teamed up with Zaha Hadid Architects to present Marvel Meraviglia, a collection named after the Calacatta Meraviglia timeless marble, which is characterised by the purity of its white composition that incorporates slender veins and soft weaves. ZHA has also reinterpreted traditional mosaic patterning in a unique range of mosaic decors named Diamond that have been informed by the concept of transformation.

Side stone

Side Stone collection by Lea Ceramiche – Photo by Lea Ceramiche.

Lea Ceramiche, a brand owned by the Panaria Group, introduces Side Stone, a collection drawing inspiration from Ceppo di Gré, a stone with a richly heterogeneous composition that is extracted from Lake Iseo and that played a prominent role in 20th-century Milanese architecture, now back in fashion. Ceppo di Gré is characterised by clasts of widely varying characteristics and sizes. With Side Stone, Lea Ceramiche highlights the stone’s unexplored and more elegant aspect – its natural essence. What emerges is an unprocessed quarry stone, in which the macro-inclusions are not sharply defined but rather subtly infused with calcareous cementation.

Brutalist-inspired surfaces

District collection by Ceramiche Keope – Photo by Ceramiche Keope.

Ceramiche Keope presents District, the new concrete-effect collection that draws heavily on the aesthetic canon of 1950s brutalism, revisiting them to meet the modern need to connect with nature. District is available in four neutral nuances – Ivory, Grey, Silver and Greige – and is ideal for indoor and outdoor environments for residential and commercial architectural and interior design projects.

Cersaie 2023. Windy collection by Nendo x Decoratori Bassanesi – Photo by Masahiro Ohgami, courtesy of Decoratori Bassanesi.