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Cool slate-gray ceramic panels articulating undulating wave patterns dominate the visual field, their surfaces incised with delicate parallel striations that flow like topographic contours across…

Drift Antibacterial Ceramic Wall Cladding by Nikolaos Karintzaidis is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2024 Platinum A' Design Award in Building Materials and Construction Components Design Competition Category.


PlatinumBuilding Components· 2024

Drift Antibacterial Ceramic Wall Cladding

by Nikolaos Karintzaidis

Client: Iris Ceramica Group

Platinum A' Design Award Winner in Building Components Category

1,806,781

Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #154733

Colors

The Design

About Drift Antibacterial Ceramic Wall Cladding

Functionality defines the aesthetics, using new techniques to reinterpret eternal themes in an attempt to synthesize spatial quality through specific architectural gestures. Open to the elements, external space is protected by a canopy that creates a microclimate. Combining modern design with simplicity of shape, curves and crisp lines define a layout adjusting elegantly into any architectural context while permitting occupants to enjoy outdoor spaces regardless of weather conditions all year round.

The Recognition

About the Platinum A' Design Award

Drift Antibacterial Ceramic Wall Cladding is a Platinum A' Design Award winner, an extremely prestigious recognition granted to truly exceptional, elegant, and magnificent designs. Platinum winners are marvels of creation, testaments to the limits of intellectual creativity, and demonstrate the unmatched professionalism and genius of their designers. These designs are expected to be the most renowned works that define the aesthetics of an era, contribute to the well-being of society, and push the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Drift Antibacterial Ceramic Wall Cladding exhibits a transcendent level of excellence and unequivocally makes the world a better place with its advantageous and worthwhile characteristics. Drift Antibacterial Ceramic Wall Cladding is a Platinum A' Design Award-winning work that triggers desires, inspires, excites, delights, and sparks great joy.

Where to Get It

Architectural and Industrial Design Services

We transform spaces and products through innovative design solutions that merge functionality with aesthetics. Our award-winning studio specializes in sustainable architecture, industrial design, and material innovation, bringing international expertise to every project.

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Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties
Ceramic wall panels can stand on their own but also develop patterns of visual continuity through modulation, an open ended process referring to Islamic motifs expanding infinitely. Their combination generates geometric patterns by simple rotation of slab, in order to achieve maximum degree of customisation with minimum use of construction elements. Module balances between geometric and abstract to fit different environments and ambience, with applications ranging from small to large scale.
Dimensions & Packaging
Active Surfaces natural materials combine science and design to improve wellbeing in spaces people live in. Active Surfaces turn ceramic slabs into an ecoactive material with four superior properties which are antibacterial and antiviral, antipollution, antiodour and selfcleaning certified to ISO standards. These materials can degrade bacteria and viruses including SARS CoV2, polluting particles and molecules responsible for bad odours. Ecoactive surface is also more resistant to dirt making it easier to clean.
Tags
innovation, sustainability, ceramics, heritage, environment
Production Technology
DYS is a versatile on demand decoration service patented by Iris Ceramica, making possible to produce any kind of decoration on ceramic surfaces. The result is a unique customisation that turns ceramics into an authentic art form. Taking advantage of innovative printing possibilities, a dynamic dialogue with technology and progress is materialised combining abstract with geometric. Continuous ripples add plasticity to flat surfaces, reflecting continuity of printing process and technical features behind manufacture of ceramic slabs.
Design Challenge
Underscoring the relation among the conformation and the medium that is composed of, craft becomes a visual expression of the making activity as configuration seizes the memory of raw matter in the finished product. Converting impressions to physicality, place and memory are captured and preserved in space. Interplay of reflections and patterns reveals different textures in pools, spas and wellness centres. A visual reflection of people’s circulation in stations, shopping centres and public areas, flow is converted to spatial experience.
Research
With reference to traditional ceramics illustrating long history of building with earth, pottery lines highlight our common roots and deep connection with earth. Converting environment to artefact by combining natural and humanmade, project strengthens the correlation between material and final product through a conceptual process which underscores links among form and substance. Through visual and physical linkages, ceramic slabs design forges a strong link with what is made of, matter extracted from earth.
Inspiration
Inspired by natural landscape of Emirates the ceramic wall panels capture essence of place while bringing physical scenery in the manufactured. Linear pattern mimics sand ridges as curved and parabolic lines formed by interaction with wind engraving land are translated to fluid geometry, taking cues from landscape topographical contouring. Referring to unique local geography, desert dunes and terrain contours shaped by the wind illustrate how human trace intersects with the trace of time.
Project Duration
The project was completed in 2023.
Operation Flow
Encountering movement and plasticity, vibrations and pulses activate surfaces complementing ceramic slab texture and tactility. Employing metallic inks and tonal adjustments in combination with the wide range of Iris Ceramica slabs, users can add personality and distinctiveness in domestic habitat. Applied as cladding in building envelopes, geometric combinations form a dialogue with mutability of topography and urban environment.
Image Credits
Studio Niko Kapa

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