Fossils fuel winning tile design
The tile might resemble the walls of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell as he ticked off the days, but in fact it’s the winner of Italian tile firm Refin Ceramiche’s 2014 ‘Create Your Tile’ competition, which PIP’s editor helped judge. The design is by young Polish architect Kasia Zareba, who studied architecture first in Poland and then Eindhoven Design Academy. Her concept centred on prehistoric imprints found in fossils of the grooved shells of extinct ammonites. Able to be tessellated together in random patterns leading to quite pleasing outcomes, consider it part of Refin’s theory of natural selection, which ensured through its competition that only the fittest survived. Something, thankfully, that could also be said for Madiba.