Winners for the ADI Booth Design, Ceramics & Bathroom Design Awards at Cersaie 2021

The 2021 edition of Cersaie, the international exhibition of ceramics for architecture and bathroom furnishings, saw in its multifaceted program two awards for the quality of products and fittings in proficient display booths, promoted by ADI and organised by the ADI Emilia Romagna Delegation in collaboration with Confindustria Ceramica. The winners for the seventh ADI Ceramics & Bathroom Design Award for the most innovative Italian products in the ceramics and bathroom furnishing sectors and the second edition of the ADI Booth Design Award, for exhibition booths that most effectively promote company products and brand values, were announced on September 29, 2021, at the Bologna Exhibition Center in Italy.

Valentina Downey, chair of ADI’s Emilia-Romagna Delegation, observed the important role of ADI in promoting design culture within Italian companies in cooperation with Cersaie. “The products and booths selected by the two panels of judges will be shortlisted for the 2022 edition of the ADI Design Index, the yearbook featuring the best of Italian design in each product category selected by the ADI Permanent Design Monitor ahead of the next edition of the Compasso d’Oro ADI, the most prestigious Italian design award,” notes the press statement.

Emilio Mussini, Vice Chairman of Confindustria Ceramica, the organising body and exhibition promotor for Cersaie, noted the importance of the seven-year collaboration between the fair and ADI (Association for Industrial Design). “The prestige of these awards is a great incentive for all manufacturers of ceramic tiles, bathroom furnishings and taps to work even harder with the aim of being listed for the prestigious international Compasso d’Oro award.”

ADI Booth Design Award

A jury panel of experts in exhibit design comprising Cecilia Bione (professor at the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna), Pierluigi Molteni (architect, professor of Advanced Design), and Wladimiro Bendandi (expert in communication and brand identity representing the ADI Emilia-Romagna delegation) assessed the company booths presented at the event that ran from September 27 to October 1, 2021. The winners were the ones who “most effectively communicated the identity and value of the company’s products,” in the jury’s own words.

1. Ceramica Sant’Agostino

The Italian furnishing company’s booth stood for its uniquely powerful and effective use of greenery, underscoring the project’s sequential spatial composition. The choreographed setting in the hall created an intriguing 'urban design' that encouraged interaction from the visitors, spelling a journey of discovery through Ceramica Sant’Agostino’s myriad products.

2. Antonio Lupi

A deliberate consistency was woven between Antonio Lupi’s booth design, graphic design, and their exhibited products to become part of a rigorous and wide-ranging "communication project". This continuous interaction threaded between the various levels of design was meant to convey the brand’s fresh proposals and philosophy rooted in identity, uniting the company and its surface designs as a highly cohesive entity.

3. Mirage

In terms of presentation, Mirage’s design reinterpreted the spatial architecture of the booth in a bid to merge a sense of visual openness with effectiveness. A laminated wood beam roof converted an open, hollowed-out space into a spacious central plaza that became the centre of attention, replete with its large, urban-scale totems to become the ideal space to showcase featured products.

4. Vallelunga & Co

Adopting an intelligent, sophisticated approach that emerges as a domestic space, their contemporary design was well thought through with fantastic use of rooms, thresholds, and choreographed corridors. These reinterpreted architectural elements combined archetypal tradition with the quality and innovation of the brand’s exhibited products at Cersaie.

5. Living Ceramics

A synthesis of the brand’s characteristics drove the meticulous design of the architectural spaces, which combined with the elegance of details and coherence of the graphic project resulted in a booth that carried a strong sense of rigour, accompanied by a variety of messages.

ADI Ceramics & Bathroom Design Award

In the first two days of the exhibition, a panel of experts consisting of Italian designer Silvia Stanzani, Oscar G. Colli, co-founder of the magazine Il Bagno oggi e domani, architectural designer Luigi Romanelli and Valentina Downey, chair of ADI, Emilia Romagna Delegation, judged the exhibited products. The winning works had a common thread of successfully combining innovation and design excellence.

Ceramic Tile category winners:

1. Ceramica Sant’Agostino for FusionArt

The winner was selected for their unusual interpretation of natural materials, interpreting the natural soul of wood and solid vigour of concrete in a ceramic surface. The innovative tile revels in an excellent graphic, material, and colour balance.

2. Ceramica Fioranese for Kintsugi

A leader in outstanding technical and manufacturing expertise enabled Ceramica Fioranese to develop a product that ties in the value of three different materials in a comprehensive industrial process. These reinterpreted the visual poetry of an ancient Japanese technique called Kinstsugi, where broken pottery is repaired by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, celebrating and owning ‘imperfections’.

3. Cooperativa Ceramica Imola for Attitude by Leonardo

Their winning product design was a full-body ceramic that boasted of superior technical performance and material qualities. This resulted from an innovative production process in which the company revisited the traditional body pressing process and exploited the random effect of the crushing operation.

Special mentions:

Provenza for Unique Marble

Their winning product celebrated the eternal beauty of marble by tying it with the contemporary lightness of resin, in a visionary journey that manifests as a successful and graphic marriage of materials. Based on five of the world’s most exclusive types of marble, the tile design pursues distinctive cuts and natural vein patterns that are enhanced by resin with a tasteful contrast of monochrome.

Panaria Ceramica for Blade

Interpreting metallic surfaces, their product fully exploits its graphic and ceramic characteristics to emerge as a warm and welcoming material, specifically suited to contemporary interior design projects.

Bathroom Furnishing category winners:

1. Ceramica Flaminia for Lavabo Spire

Designed by Italian product designer and artist Elena Salmistraro, the Spire countertop washbasin features elliptical volumes that combine soft and asymmetric shapes, and doubles as a perfect furnishing object for modern interior settings.

2. Arblu for Linea

Made specifically to be employed in contemporary hospitality and residential design sectors, the product recognises and celebrates the technical and design research required to design a shower enclosure that meets the needs of a minimalist bathroom design.

3. Relax Design for Black Label

A team of selected designers such as Davide Lanfranco (Tempio bathtub) and ZeTae Studio (Hug freestanding washbasin) and more innovate with corporate design strategies to skillfully create a ‘designers’ catalogue of products and furnishing proposals.

Know more about the main trends in tiles observed at and identified by Cersaie for its 38th edition here.