(Feb 15) – Glass, metal and mostly ceramics in particular. New elements to refine the external faces of the buildings, for the turning 21st century architecture. In this scenario, Italy can carve out a leading role to kick-start the ceramics industry: tomorrow the Italian ceramics companies will be at the conference entitled ‘Creating the 21st Century Facade: How Architects and Fabricators are Advancing Curtain Wall Design in the Digital Age’. The meeting, organized for the first time from the magazine ‘The Architect’s Newspaper’, will be held at the McGraw Hill Auditorium in New York, with Patrik Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects, as key-note speaker. An entire session – Creating Sustainable Facades with Metal Mesh, and Ceramic Composites – will be dedicated to Italian ceramic tiles. Eleven Italian companies will participate in the initiative, exposing their materials and works: Atlas Concorde, Casalgrande Padana, Coem, Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola, Emilceramica, Florim, Lea, Marazzi, Mirage, Il Palagio and Ceramica Sant’Agostino. The meeting in New York is for architects, designers, developers, planners and manufacturers that will assist the illustration of architectural case studies. The conference will certainly be a great public success, judging by the pre-paid registrations for the meeting. (Ram)
ITALIAN CERAMICS: TRADITION AND INNOVATION
The Italian ceramic tile production is a cornerstone of the Italian materials industry.
The ceramic tile industry today counts about 290 companies and 38 thousand employees, able to generate 6.517 billion euros from 2.552 million sales on the domestic market (and 815.6 of this turnover come from sales of foreign factories) and from 3.965 billion euros of exports in the five continents. These are the figures that emerge from the last statistical study conducted by the Confindustria Ceramica Studies Centre in the Ceramic Tile, for the year 2010.
