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Pico is a collection of ceramic tiles designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec for Italian brand Mutina. In designer’s words, “While in recent years tiling mainly produced icy surfaces hiding the material depth, “Pico” focuses on revealing the matter as a substance itself – the compressed sand and minerals that constitute ceramic tiles. We intended to maintain the raw aspect of traditional earth floors or handmade cement, letting the material convey its natural characteristics.
The collection comes in three differently coloured bases (white, grey and sand), composed of specific mineral mixtures that produce surfaces with a real material depth. The subtly composed shades have a matt finish with a sensual surface feel. Together with its slightly irregular dotted texture “Pico” produces gentle surfaces that stand in contrast with the extreme brightness and slickness of today’s coating materials.
In this collection we have worked on defining a regular-irregular texture, the result is the declension of two relief surfaces: “Down” with sunken dots and “Up” with elevated dots. Both reliefs are available in their natural, monochrome base colours: “blanc”, “gris” and “terre”. Furthermore, to add dynamics, we also decided to use two tones of colour, red and blue, applied as little dots in the hollow or as a base colour. The use of colours activates the relief by creating delicate shadows, turning the tiles a nuance colder or warmer.
We wanted to use the ceramic material in a very flexible way consequently the “Pico” collection is equally adapted for use in public spaces (airports, restaurants) as for use in domestic spaces (indoors and outdoors).”
Image Courtesy: Studio Bouroullec
