Cities are like humans. No two are identical. Each has a size. Each has a mood. Each has its own skin. There is a physical reality. There is an emotional reality. There is a cultural reality. All of which contribute to its outward character. As people shape cities, cities shape people. It’s with this thinking that VitrA decided to explore a new collection Inspired by six distinct cities and the materials that influence their appearance, their form and ultimately their personality — yet with a twist… all these disparate materials are recreated in porcelain.
Introducing Urban Inspired by VitrA.
Think of Rio De Janeiro… festive, lively, colourful, bright and lush. Imagine London … the driver of the modern era, a city that reinvented itself with the dawn of the industrial age. Consider the thrill of Rome, a city of classical grandeur and great romance. And what of Moscow and its dramatic architecture and texture and its stony statements of grandeur? Or Berlin a city of gleaming metal barriers and divisions, both united and separated. Then there’s Istanbul, a city housed on two continents and home to many civilizations, conquered and built upon, again and again, layer upon layer.
So VitrA asked itself: what material is an indelible part of each of these cities’ urban landscapes?
In Rio where vast forests and civilization meets, wood surrounds and supplies its diverse cultures and cosmopolitan makeup so perfectly.
In Istanbul too, it is wood that created a dramatic architectural backdrop that impressed the Ottoman style on the city with the yali and konak and made it a metropolis that became something much more than simply a conquered Constantinople.
In London, concrete lent its strength to build up the capital of the industrial revolution, a thoroughly new material for a thoroughly new era of human existence.
In Berlin, modernity is represented by its metallic signature, a darkly gleaming statement.
In Moscow, the glossy appearance of marble and light colored stones delivers brightness and shine in a darker environments.
In Rome monuments tower impressively, timelessly, enduringly in stone providing a romance that endures.
As these metropolitan environments all adapt and endure in their signature skins, VitrA’s new Urban Inspired series will provide much needed versatility and adaptability to the environments you create and design providing lasting style and surprising flexibility. Welcome to porcelain that is so much more than what you might expect. Resembling wood, stone, concrete and metal, Urban Inspired reproduces the beauty of all these materials, yet injects them with new virtue for another era of design. Every great city has its own identity, its own skin. Urban Inspired reflects that DNA, bridging the space between yesterday’s materials and tomorrow’s evolving urban space.
ROME INSPIRED
Trevi, hard-wearing beauty
Stone-like beauty, unimaginable flexibility. The enduring natural appeal of stone: travertine, buxy rocks, sandstone and scabas in white, grey, beige mocha and anthracite. Rome Inspired’s gold motifs are suitable for both floors or walls. This might well be the most flexible of Urban Inspired’s lines with supplementary parts and floor inserts which create perfect harmony with color tiles.
LONDON INSPIRED
Piccadilly, paradoxical virtues
Contrasts create balance and strength and refinement creates the luster and sheen of poured concrete in a metal frame. Three colors: white grey and taupe. A flower motif to weave a classic touch of refinement into the hard-wearing fabric of modernity. London Inspired is a thoroughly modern skin, refined and yet unyielding for any contemporary environment.
İSTANBUL INSPIRED
Pera, with any environment
The grain and enduring appeal of wood. Black and white Light and dark, each with the choice of three patterns including a relief pattern and yellow decoration that recalls Ottoman designs of yesteryear. The contrast of strength and sensitivity. Istanbul Inspired is like the city it’s named for: a paradox of opposing virtues and polar opposites that unite to create an environment both unimaginable and impossible anywhere else.
RIO DE JANEIRO INSPIRED
Samba, deprived environments
The warm aesthetic of wood blends fresh, festive, young and flexible enough for an infinite number of design scenarios. Rio Inspiredcuts a new profile in porcelain, resembling blond, light oak and wenge timbers a skin suitable for urban environments that wish to recall nature’s delicate balancing act of sustainable beauty. Motif alternatives available in three primary colours – red, yellow, turquoise – which provide versatility and the ability to blend seamlessly with an endless range of colour schemes.
MOSCOW INSPIRED
Bolshoi, defines new borders
Bright surfaces for light. Think of agate marble in white, beige and caramel. A combination cool as ice and yet as delicious as ice cream. Especially suitable for Turkish and Russian markets where bright and semi-bright marble touches reflect bygone eras that still manifest themselves. Geometric motifs and tile patterns link surfaces seamlessly with the visible past and the emergent present.
BERLIN INSPIRED
Bellevue
A coherent statement that explores new limits by breaking boundaries in imaginative new ways. Think Berlin. Meshing metal and wood for a bold new design language. A shimmering metallic glazed surface. The patina of aged, painted wood. Geometric design motifs and nickel borders to tie a conversation into one coherent statement.
