It’s been claimed to be both a growing trend and a dying one. Interior designers don’t seem to agree on 2019’s taste for terrazzo.
Terrazzo with a twist was a very big trend last year, with multiple designs creating a vast range in materials, colours, and finishes. There has been a growing trend towards Terrazzo-effect tiles and Tile Addict has been following the numerous terrazzo-inspired creations for the last few years. Its mottled appearance is relatively timeless and classic, think Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is often the material of choice to cover large expansive floors, such as in airports and shopping centres. Some think it may have had its moment, while others hold firm that the best of terrazzo is yet to be seen.
The terrazzo innovations of the last few years will not go unnoticed and companies are still going strong with their fabulous terrazzo work, such as Diespeker who were nominated for Tile & Stone Awards for the second year in a row in recognition of their terrazzo work. But it is, perhaps, a look that interior designers believe can get tired quickly (especially in residential spaces) so perhaps an updated use of terrazzo is simply what is needed, rather than throwing it out all together. There are ways to commit to the look without, fully, committing to the look.
Altrock is one company who is not just working the terrazzo angle, but is doing so with an ecological bent. They create made-to-order trendy surfaces using 90% recycled materials. Resin combined with the by-products and waste materials from local marble manufacturing (e.g. marble flour, marble chips, broken pieces and off-cuts) creates hard-wearing, decorative items such as tables, kitchen worktops and of course, tiles. The resin comes in a large range of custom colours and the pieces are cast by hand to create unique slabs in all shapes and sizes.
Ceramiche Coem offers a varied selection of styles in their Terrazzo collection. Most unique of which is their Tessere (Weave) design which utilises their ‘Mini’ finer grain. It comes in an assorted mix of neutrals and unpolished or half-polished looks.
Terrazzo is often characterised by the overwhelming speckled effect the various little pieces of marble create. However with Pueblo by Vitromex USA, a similar but subtler style can be found. Although not strictly terrazzo, these porcelain tiles utilise light and dark sands and coarse aggregate with a cement surface to form irregular and organic looking tiles.
The subtle terrazzo, in its original form, is also something offered by companies such as Huguet. Designing tiles with fewer observable fragments such as in Raval and Elvissa is one thing, but this company takes it a step further by saturating only certain areas of some tiles with stone chips. Be it in the corner, in sporadic lines, or in unusual and varied patterns, this style gives their terrazzo a very unique look.
As if the incredible selection of Huguet’s terrazzo wasn’t enough, the company owners, Laia Herrera and Biel Huguet, decorated their Barcelona apartment with bespoke terracotta terrazzo grout. The apartment’s original red clay tiles were repurposed into aggregate and combined with white plaster. This was then used between the floor and wall tiles which sprawl throughout the home resulting in an incredibly effective one-of-a-kind design.
“Huguet Apartment / TEd’A arquitectes” [Piso Huguet / TEd’A arquitectes] 19 Sep 2018. ArchDaily. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. <https://www.archdaily.com/899959/huguet-apartment-teda-arquitectes/> ISSN 0719-8884
Read more about 2019’s Tile Trends here
A new post by Hanna Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, March 2019.