Bentu Design from China has been awarded the highest distinction in the Red Dot Award: Best of the Best for its concrete wall decoration tiles – Shadow. These tiles are made of using 50% disused ceramic as aggregate in cement.
While recycling ceramic waste is not news, the traditional way of recycling was to crush the ceramic waste into powder and then mix this into porcelain clay. Powder added into clay made the porcelain fire faster and reduced the clay required. However the quantity of powder acceptable was quite limited and so recycling massive amounts of ceramic waste in this way is still not practical. Bentu Design found that the gelation effect of cement is unaffected by ceramic aggregate and thus developed a new way of recycling ceramic waste.
Wall tiles generally rely on colour and surface texture for their decorative effect. Shadow is different. It maintains a planar form but uses different shades of shadow with grooves of different depths to deliver a 3D effect that enhances the visual impact of the 300 by 300 by 12mm tiles.
Bentu’s design simply let the form follows function, so the tiles are free from unnecessary embellishment; and are thus concise and elegant.
Professor Dr. Peter Zec, CEO of the Red Dot Award, says: “Only design visionaries can achieve the perfect harmony between the quality of the function, seductiveness, use and responsibility. The award finds ground-breaking designs like these and makes them visible to the whole world.” (2017)
Bentu is an independent design brand founded in 2011, engaged in innovative design combined with manufacturing. Bentu focuses on the R&D, design, production and sales of products from lighting to home furnishing and outdoor furniture
A new post by Joe Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, July 2017.
