VOLUME 6

Now in its sixth edition, Creative Book is a publication that underscores Casalgrande Padana’s attention and interest in the world of architecture, design and research. This publication, which was mainly dedicated to designers as an aid during their work, has become an accurately and attractively organized volume that offers lots of hints, and not just about the expressive potential of porcelain stoneware and its many uses, its structural qualities and appearance (along with suggestions, examples and solutions), but also about the way this material embellishes and qualifies the architectural contexts in which it is applied, with results of an overall excellent quality.

Not by chance have the last four editions of this publication been created in collaboration with Casabella, the prestigious international journal dedicated to architecture, protagonist of the cultural debate concerning the subject of projects for the past eighty years. A policy that yet again underscores Casalgrande Padana’s intention to consolidate, to an even greater extent, the special relations that have always bound it to the designer sphere.

Creative Book is divided into three sections.

1. Applications Review

The first part includes a selection of the projects that took part in the last Grand Prix Casalgrande Padana international competition of architecture, the winners of which were awarded in Palazzo Vecchio’s Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, during a ceremony that, besides representatives from the various institutions, also included other singular guests, namely professor Francesco Dal Co and architect Kengo Kuma; two authoritative personages in the spheres of international architecture.

The various different works depicted within the Creative Book have been divided into the main building sectors: shopping and business centers, public buildings and constructions for the services-producing sector, industrial building, residential building, façade cladding and swimming pools. Each work is illustrated by a series of photos, a technical data sheet describing the materials used and a brief biography of the designer in question.

2. Finishing Details

The second section of the volume deals with the subject of finishing details for floors and walls. It also discusses certain typical parts of the buildings, from ground level to the coping.

A graphic collection of useful notes and hints about how to use the ceramic materials correctly in the various different applications, from the more simple to the most complex.

3. Materials, sizes, surfaces and colours

The last part is dedicated to materials. The performance and design-oriented features of Granitogres, Marmogres, Pietre Native, Granitoker and Padana Piscine are highlighted in the technical sheets of the products along with a suggestive example in color. Details about formats, surface textures and colors underscore and complete each other at different levels, allowing differentiated interpretations to lead to customized projects.

Creative Book thus intends to offer designers a series of suggestions that indicate certain of the possible directions that research into the expressive potential and compositions achieved by using ceramic materials in architecture can take.