At Coverings 2021, we honored outstanding Special Recognition projects that demonstrated spectacular craftsmanship and creativity in the use of tile & stone. This week we’re putting the spotlight on projects who were recognized for their international flair.

Special Recognition: International
La Sastrería Restaurant
Masquespacio
Valencia, Spain

The objective of the project was very clearly defined as fulfilling the illusion of a group of young entrepreneurs seeking to offer a new culinary and sensorial experience. The restaurant is divided into three parts. In the first part, you can find a bar that gives prominence to the neighborhood itself not only through the tribute made to its architectural references but also to its neighbors and their way of living.

The design shows patterns made with custom tiles that reinterpret the facades of the neighborhood. In addition, special attention has been given to the bar that looks like a façade itself with its unique ornaments and figures. In the middle, we can see how attention is focused on the selection of liquors that will be used for cocktails.

The second part of the restaurant in which seafood is very clearly the protagonist of the place. Thus, the design recreates a great wave that grows towards the kitchen and is translated into a sculpture made of ceramic pieces. The artisan ceramic floors in white and blue make us feel the division between sand and water, while the chairs designed for space refer to the fishing boats. Finally, behind the kitchen, the warehouses became a fish market, as if it were the Fish Market.

Special Recognition: International
La Roca Camper Store
Tomás Alonso Studio
Barcelona, Spain

This Camper store is the latest of a long series of projects for this shoe manufacturer. To date, it has led to over ten stores throughout the world where tiles are used as a key feature, thanks to both their practical, long-lasting, low-maintenance use as a surface covering in stores and to their versatile applications and potential in terms of color and finishes, allowing them to act as a visual language in the definition of a space.

Both the above aspects fit in with Camper’s philosophy: that an end product’s materials, durability and comfort must all form part of its visual expression. What this particular project stands out for is its location in La Roca Village, a big shopping centre positioned as a select outlet village.

Conceptually, the aim was to create interiors that contrast strongly with the outside of the shopping centre’s buildings. The idea was to immerse customers in a setting where the sole emphasis is the purity of materials and their function. At a practical level, apart from the fact that this is a substantially bigger store, it also has far more customers and products. By creating zigzagging walls, far more efficient use of the space could be made, since the columns act as displays, as well as storing the products, with immediate access to a mirror and bench.

Special Recognition: International
Glass Tesserae Panel
Oficina de Mosaicos
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

This panel is a work of art, which was created upon a painting by Isabel Ruas, architect and artist founder of Oficina de Mosaicos. The original work is an oil pastel on paper that was specially designed for the restaurant of the headquarters of a huge company in Rio de Janeiro, in a historical modern building, projected by MM Roberto Architects. The purpose was to create a strong contrast through the association of the primary colors, red, blue, yellow, while giving an impression of diluted urban landscape.

The panel is 7.30 m wide x 2.40 m high.

The main challenge was to respond to the client’s extremely short schedule. We had to produce and install the mosaic panel in just two weeks. Furthermore, the mosaic was to be installed in Rio de Janeiro, 400 miles away from our Studio in São Paulo.

Other challenges were:

• The difficulty of transposition from the diluted oil pastel to the rigid material of the mosaic.
• The searching of right the materials to accomplish the color solutions. We had to search materials from several suppliers to obtain all the color gradation result.

Complexities and innovative solutions:

• Because of the vibration and movement of the building we developed with MC Bauchemie, a flexible mortar solution to accompany the movement of the wall.
• The product was specially developed for the drywall board surface where we installed the mosaic.
• In this way we have created a light but structural solution very suitable for the architectural conditions and limitations.

Special Recognition: International
Mosque in Shali City
F.H.L.I. Kiriakidis Marbles – Granites S.A.
Chechnya, Russia

Interior and exterior cladding with white marble of the new religious center in the town of Shali in the Chechen Republic of Russia.

The project, which implemented marble supply, marble consultation and installation work, started in 2016 and has been completed in July 2019. This Mosque, which is designed with traditional Uzbek rhythm with many spindles and columns (all elaborated in white marble), is to become the major attraction in the very center of Shali town in Chechnya and will be among the biggest in Europe with a projected capacity of up to 20,000 worshipers.

The marble which is completely white and can be found only in a small island in Greece had been selected out of its color and sparkling nature, as the white color is considered holy in the Muslim religion. The additional very high reflection to sunlight this marble provides, is an additional feature that is valuable especially for warm regions, as it holds its temperature for a prolonged period. The rareness and supply of this raw material was an additional challenge in the time frame given. All the white marble pieces of the cladding had a thickness of 3cm and above and had been dry installed with profiles. Colored granite/onyx/marble inlays showing flowers and eastward symbols in the arches of the exterior and interior, created an additional emphasis and contrast to the overall white mosque.

Massive spindle columns, elaborated artifacts, column capitals and balustrades added a massive weight during the installation handling. Given the enormous height (e.g., the minarets of 63,3m) and weight of the marble pieces – delicate in elaboration details -, that had to be fabricated, transported 2,000 km by road and seaway and fixed, constituted the entire project an overall challenge. All artistic elaborations have been done by state-of-the-art machinery and were finished by hand.

Careful stone consultation was implemented in-house and gave the opportunity to deliver adjustments wherever needed.

Do you have a recently completed project that features innovative design and installation of tile & stone? Consider entering it to the 2022 CID Awards – the submission portal is now open!