Material connections

The Nest Award and Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola exhibition, organised to coincide with the 2017 Design Week, consists of 3 different sections that come together with an attractive sense of movement. First there are the ledwalls exhibiting the work of the talented winners of the Chinese design competition, the Nest Award. Then there is the Cooperativa Ceramica d’ Imola corporate communications wall that views the constantly evolving history of the company through the theme of material connections. And, lastly, there are the sculpture cubes located in the centre of the display space

The project is inspired by the world of art and more precisely by the book “Point and Line to Plane” written by the great Russian artist and theorist, Kandinsky. The layout of the exhibition is based around these three simple but profound concepts.

The first step is the exhibition's collection of porcelain stoneware cubes that appear in a variety of sizes and colours. These blocks are an introduction or a kind of ground zero or game of dice that opens the exhibition. One large yellow cube seems to "float" in space even if it actually rests on another, while others with different sizes and finishes gravitate around it in a seemingly random fashion.

The thread that runs through the exhibition is the colour yellow. This creates a connection between the timeline that maps every important company moment, both past and present, and the graphics of the word “Imola”.

From the wall, the thread then passes through space to the Nest Award exhibition ledwalls that are arranged around the competition's award totem that is a spiral column formed from the vertical rotation of a square.

The yellow thread is drawn, of course, by the company's bee symbol. Clearly visible on the “Imola” wall, the bee hallmark has always communicated the brand's creativity, hard work, passion and love for innovation.

The overall result is a surprising and fascinating procession of material connections - a symbolic summary of all the distinctively Italian moments of beauty, style and quality that have marked out the first 143 years of the Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola experience.