Sometimes tile is more than just a beautiful surface for your bathroom or kitchen. Innovative minds have created multi-functional, practical, and inspiring tiles that offer so much more than aesthetics.
1. Cabin of 3D Printed Curiosities
Designed and created by architecture and design professors Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, this small cabin explores the limits of 3D printed tiles. Using local materials (including the skin of grapes) the front of the cabin is decorated in 3D hexagonal tiles designed to house succulents. As for the rest of the building, around 4,500 seed-stitch tiles weave together and protrude outwards to produce a dynamic wall full of layers and detail.
2. Tide by Kwangho Lee
South Korean designer Kwangho Lee‘s series of experimental objects utilise local materials and Tajimi Custom Tile’s specified production techniques. The result celebrates both the company’s desire to highlight method, material, and versatility as well as Lee’s iconic loop shapes. Individual modules can be used as a whole, or stacked to create something entirely different.
3. Curved tiles by Max Lamb
In a similar collaboration with Tajimi Custom Tiles, Max Lamb presented the possibilities of creating furniture with tile. His curved pieces are designed for seamless coverage in interior applications, but function just as fantastically when formed into benches and tables.
4. Mangrove tiles
In a collaboration with Reef Design Lab, SIMS (Sydney Institute of Marine Science), and the North Sydney Council, Volvo produced a series of hexagonal tiles specifically designed to function as replacements for the Australian mangrove swamps that have been destroyed to make way for seawalls. The 3D printed root system has been created to mimic the natural habitat of organisms to encourage them to inhabit the seawall.
5. Reef tiles
A similar technique was used at Hong Kong’s Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park to combat the destruction of coral reefs. A series of 128 tiles were designed to imitate the Platygyra Brain Worm Coral and seeded with local coral fragments to encourage the coral to attach and grow back.
A new post by Hanna Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, May 2021.