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Madrid Design Festival 2020

Innovation - 23.03.2020

Madrid Design Festival 2020 Cosentino City Madrid

MDF2020 Madrid Design Festival is an event that makes Madrid the world’s design capital every February. Different artistic fields mix to create a contemporary, innovative format attractive to both local and international audiences.In line with the festival program, several activities were planned for Cosentino City Madrid: Ron Arad This a prestigious Israeli designer and architect devoted to creative innovation carries out few architectural projects, but when he chooses to execute one, he puts his whole heart into it, as in his latest work, completed in 2019: the ToHa in Tel Aviv. Here he limited the built area to street level, creating a large park that does much to improve the civic quality of the place. The building uses more than 28,000 m2 of Dekton® by Cosentino for the cladding of facades, elevators, floors, ceilings, and interior partitions, and Arad came to the Spanish capital to speak on the project and give a run-through of his professional career.For more information on the ToHa tower, click Here.We also interviewed Ron Arad. Room 2030 Room 2030 came onto the scene in 2014 through the union of several firms involved in innovation and technology. In 2018, Hotel NH Collection Palacio de Avilés proposed a laboratory with sustainable cutting-edge technology facilities: ‘The Room of the Future’. It was installed at the Niemeyer Center in Áviles, and Baragaño Architects carried out the project, incorporating the contributions of each of the firms, among them Cosentino. The architect Sergio Baragaño, Marisa Santamaría of RED, and Carlos Cuadros of the Niemeyer Center came to Cosentino City Madrid to discuss the project. ‘From Poetics to Design’, Eugeni Quitllet One of the most talented creators of his generation, Eugeni Quitllet was named Designer of the Year in 2016 by Maison&Object. In a play of words, combining diseñador (designer) and soñador (dreamer), he defines himself as a disoñador. He looked back on his career, discussed sustainable design and Cosentino, and reminisced on iconic works like the chairs Masters (in collaboration with Philippe Starck), Tube for Mobles 114, and Dream’AIR, the Light Air lamp, and his Dream Tools and Din-Amic series. CTOP Restaurants Aponiente, El Invernadero, Somni, Mugaritz, Dani García, De Librije, Disfrutar, DiverXO, and DSTAgE are nine Michelin star restaurants that have relied on Cosentino materials to create a world of experiences where the dreams of chefs have come true through creativity, functionality, design, and innovation. All this is presented in a book that is not about gastronomy nor about architecture, but takes us on a new kind of journey into the talent of architects and chefs: CTPO Restaurants.The book C-Top Restaurants offers a different sort of tour through the spaces and genius of the chefs of Aponiente, El Invernadero, Somni, Mugaritz, Dani García, De Librije, Disfrutar, DiverXO, DSTAgE.It shows how the architects and interior designers of these nine restaurants have created an experiential world where chefs’ dreams come true through a combinatioon of creativity, functionality, design, and innovation. The architects Juli Capella (Somni) and Basilio Iglesias (Aponiente) and the interior designer Natalia Casco (El Invernadero) presented the keys to understanding these innovative spaces.  Santiago Alfonso: “Over the years we have been lucky to be able to work with some of the world’s leading chefs, who have let us take part in their gastronomy projects through our know-how on cutting-edge surfaces. In many cases we have hand in hand with them developed innovative materials and solutions that are now starting to appear in home kitchens. We wish to thank these great chefs, and also the architects and interior designers who have participated in their projects and resorted to Cosentino products for the design of those spaces. This publication is our way of expressing our gratitude. At the same time, we would like the book to be a source of creative inspiration, gastronomical and otherwise.” ‘Layers in Time’, Emilio Gil A pioneer in the design world and winner of the Gold Medal for Fine Arts in 2015, Emilio Gil combines a graphic design practice with teaching, history, writing, and art. The Cosentino City Madrid showroom presented ‘Layers in Time’, which after a reflection on aspects of the profession, showed works done in the collage technique from the viewpoint of the graphic designer. The exhibition is of interest because it presents a creative process that is free of the impositions of a commission, and does not depend on any relationship with a client. A project with no starting conditions yields results which, though connected to the resources available and to the language of graphic design, are not dependent on it, neither in terms of objectives nor in terms of creative processes.We conversed with Emilio Gil and one of his guests, the reputed Spanish architect José Seguí.   Master class of María Villalón This young interior designer whose studio is in Madrid avoids trends to instead pursue timelessness in her works. In 2018 she decorated Mirazur, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant originally located in the French Riviera, in the temporary transfer to Hotel NH Collection Eurobuilding in Madrid, thanks to the In Residence project. Here she pursued a natural look, using vegetation in dark tones and a Dekton® by Cosentino cladding. Accompanied by Teresa Hurtado of her technical department and Rebeka Nemeth, in charge of projects, she came to the Madrid Design Festival to speak on her latest works.
C-Guide

Innovation - 23.12.2019

C-Guide

Cosentino & Fundación Arquitectura Contemporánea

Cosentino City Madrid hosts the presentation of a new global guide of contemporary architecture whose objective is to promote the knowledge and recognition of the most excellent architecture in the world today. C-Guide arrives to connect the digital environment with the architectural reality of cities through a website and an app for mobile devices, which will encourage visits to different projects and help to understand them. C-Guide aims to generate awareness of the importance of the city, public space and architecture in the lives of citizens; the recognition of current architecture of excellence in the world, beyond academic fields.  Due to its contemporaneity, C-Guide includes works built from 1979 onwards, forty years of perspective that help to reflect on global architecture. The works included in the guide are chosen by a scientific committee appointed by the Fundación Arquitectura Contemporánea, taking into account three segments of interest: global-local tension; symbolic function; public space. The works are classified into three categories: C:  Very good architecture. Work that should not be missed if you are around the area.CC: Excellent architecture. Work that should not be missed if you are in the city.CCC: Exceptional architecture. Work that shouldn't be missed wherever you are.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​  All projects are accompanied by an image gallery (sometimes they can even include plans or drawings of the design process) and an information sheet with a description of the work, author, year of construction, location, qualification (C, CC, CCC), visitability (visitable, visible from the street, visitable by arrangement or not) and labels (they help with interpretation and are proposed by the C-Guide committee, as well as by the users themselves). The platform offers the possibility of a quick search by the user, taking into account these same parameters included in the information sheet of each project.The official presentation of C-Guide took place yesterday at Cosentino City Madrid, the dynamic exhibition center that Cosentino has in the middle of Paseo de la Castellana and that is considered a reference point for architecture and design professionals in the city of Madrid. The Contemporary Architecture Foundation was represented by the trustees Rafael de La-Hoz, Victoria Garriga and María González, who discussed the issues taken into account for the development of C-Guide. This colloquium was moderated by the journalist and writer Anatxu Zabalbeascoa. Also present were Pedro García, patron and responsible for the activity; Jorge Martín, responsible for the contents of the guide; and Carlos Anaya, coordinator of activities. On behalf of Grupo Cosentino, the event was attended by Santiago Alfonso, vice-president of communication and marketing.C-Guide will be expanded in phases, including new cities in each of them. In 2019, the first phase will be launched with works in London and Los Angeles, and will be extended in the coming months to Barcelona, Paris and Sydney. 
Conifera

Innovation - 24.06.2019

Conifera

Arthur Mamou-Mani & COS

Arthur Mamou-Mani collaborated with COS for the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in April, designing this installation built with 3D printed bio-plastic in the courtyard of Palazzo Isimbardi in Milan. The fashion house COS, headquartered in London, built its eighth consecutive installation at Milan’s annual Salone del Mobile, this time in collaboration with the London-based French architect Arthur Mamou-Mani.Conifera is a large-scale digitally designed pavilion built with 700 3D-printed ‘bio-blocks’ made of renewable materials. The project centered on using 3D technology without sacrificing sustainablity and the message. The structure connects the palazzo’s central inner courtyard to the garden, creating a transition symbolized in a change of materials, with a mix of wood and bioplastic transforming into soft, translucent, pure bioplastic towards the other end.In Arthur Mamou-Mani’s words, “Conifera blends the digital with the physical world while addressing sustainability through the use of compostable bio-plastic, propduced and 3D printed locally. It is a dialogue between technology and craft, between the manmade and the natural and between monumentality and lightness. I hope the visitors will appreciate the futuristic high-tech aspect of the installation but also the fact that is is deeply poetic and human.”
Mars 2117

Innovation - 16.05.2019

Mars 2117

BIG

The government of the United Arab Emirates is developing the ‘Mars 2117’ project, the objective of which is to build the first stable human settlement on the Red Planet within a time frame of 100 years.  Part of this ambitious program is Mars Science City, a campus for outer space simulation located outside Dubai, formed by interconnected domes covering 17.5 hectares of desert, where conditions on planet Mars are recreated. A group of scientists will live during one year in this ‘city,’ conducting researches on self-sufficiency in energy, water, and food. Meanwhile, a museum built with walls made of desert sand and 3D-printed, will show the progress of the space conquest. If architecture is the art and science of making the world fitter for human life, this becomes even more evident as we venture beyond Earth. Designing for low gravity, low pressure, extreme cold, and high radiation levels radically changes the architect’s tools, as well as the resulting forms and spaces. In this sense, the project studies the possibilities of inflatable architecture, robotics, and 3D printing to create a vernacular Martian architecture using local materials. With the prospect of inhabiting a world that has no existing ecosystem, the word ‘environment’ takes on new meaning. The challenge is no longer to preserve the environment, but to design and build an altogether new one created by human beings, which go from keepers of the Earth to creators of their small cycle of life on Mars. 
The Earth in Perspective

Innovation - 14.11.2018

The Earth in Perspective

Planet

Taken from a distance of 450 km above ground, these photographs show cities’ impact on the territory in places like Doha’s artificial islands, the development around Bilbao’s estuary, and Riyadh’s built desert. Since 1968, when the crew of Apollo 8 took the mythical image of Earth from outer space, many zenithal photos of our planet have been taken from satellites, with evident applications for fields like agriculture, the environment, or mapmaking. The firm Planet, set up by former NASA employees, advances in this direction by turning the lenses of their cameras to an angle between 45º and 60º, in such a way that the Earth’s surface appears three-dimensional. The effect obtained with this simple innovation simulates the oblique view one would have from an airplane window.A constellation of over 175 satellites monitors the planet day by day, coursing the lunar orbit every 90 minutes. Measuring less than a meter and with a useful life of six years, the satellites are designed and made by the same enterprise that launches a new one every three months. The system allows sending information every day to thirty land-based stations, located at different points of the globe, where it is processed, filed, and uploaded to a web platform so that it is accessible to the public.The change of perspective that the first photographs of Earth taken from space produced, transforming our collective awareness of the planet, now takes on new dimensions as these images enter a network of data. We can now not only see, but also in an automated way compare, analyze, and identify the transformations that our impact on the territory produces.
MINI LIVING-BUILT BY ALL

Innovation - 09.05.2018

MINI LIVING-BUILT BY ALL

MINI and Studiomama

MINI LIVING and the London firm Studiomama show how to turn abandoned spaces into potential livable ones. The installation BUILT BY ALL concentrated four inhabitable cells in less than 20 square meters, designing them under the MINI principle, a creative use of space where footprint is minimized and flexibility maximized. The project arose in response to the limitations on access to housing adapted to current needs of society, including people’s desire to make dwellings their own through active participation in the design process and subsequent changes. In Shanghai now, on a larger scale, there is a project for a complex of over 50 apartments and communal facilities organized around the same revolutionary concept of habitation. FACTORY OF IDEAS comes in the context of Milan Design Week to promote participatory architecture among visitors, who set out to make small models of their own versions of flexible, collaborative spaces.
Inhabits

Innovation - 25.04.2018

Inhabits

DNN, Progetto CMR and Dekton by Cosentino

Ultracompact surface Dekton® covers 300sqm floor area right in front of Sforzesco Castle. Piazza Castelo becomes a smart plaza thanks to technology designed by Progetto CMR  and Dekton by Cosentino. The 300 square meters of public space is covered with an ultracompact veneer, Dekton® Radium, 80% of which is made of recycled materials taken from the Dekton® production process. This collaboration falls under the innovative INHABITS line, a DNN initiative that provides solutions adapted to the human being and respectful towards the environment in the housing sector.
The Diner

Innovation - 23.04.2018

The Diner

Rockwell Group/Cosentino

David Rockwell and Cosentino present The Diner, their latest installation awarded Best Engagement in Fuorisalone 2018, during Milan Design Week. The team formed by the American firm Rockwell Group , the Spanish company Cosentino, a leader in innovative surfaces for architecture and design, the studio 2x4, and the American magazine Surface presents a pop-up space that transports us to the aesthetic of diners, bringing it to another level. This ephemeral restaurant with a retro aesthetic uses Cosentino surfaces to create unique spaces: Silestone® quartz surfaces in the Pearl Jasmine and Eternal Marquina colors for a central curved bar counter 14 meters long; the Dekton® Onix ultracompact surface, with a finish inspired in eroded cement, for the Roadside bar counter; and the Dekton® tabletops in the Opera color for the tables of the sector inspired in diners of the Midwest and the East and West Coasts.
RR201 / Roca Recicla

Innovation - 20.04.2018

RR201 / Roca Recicla

Andreu Carulla/ El Celler de Can Roca

A non-recyclable material can be reused. For two years now the Roca brothers have combined the running of El Celler de Can Roca, twice proclaimed the world’s best restaurant, with Roca Recicla, an ambitious project to work toward zero waste at Celler. In line with this is RR201, an original project of product designer Andreu Carulla that transforms substances impossible to recycle into light and versatile furniture pieces. To make these stools, which can be used at meals, all that’s needed are three boxes of expanded polystyrene, of the kind used to transport food and other ítems to the restaurant. After a process of crumbling and subsequent subjection to pressurized air in metal molds, a final layer of paint is applied. Though coming from the same mold, no two stools are alike, a result with an  artisanal nature highly characteristic of the cuisine of the Roca team. The first limited edition of these stools was presented at Spazio Rossana Orlandi during Milan Design Week 2018.

Innovation - 31.10.2017

"Under" Restaurant

Snohetta

"Under", the first European underwater restaurat,arises from the water at the southernmost point of the Norwegian coast, in the village of Båly. Like a sunken periscope, the restaurant – which will also function as a marine life research center – offers magnificent views of the aquatic environment and its variations through seasons and changing weather. The monolithic form of the building lies against the craggy shoreline, immersed in the water and resting on the sea bed five meters below the water’s surface.The meter-thick concrete walls are prepared to withstand pressure and shock from rugged sea conditions, while forming a ‘shell’ of coarse-surfaced cement that lures mussels to cling to it and eventually create an artificial reef. More than an aquarium, the structure will become part of the marine ecosystem.
Cloud Forest

Innovation - 23.10.2017

Cloud Forest WilkinsonEyre

An artificial ecosystem thanks to technology and nature working side by side. The British firm WilkinsonEyre has carried out one of the most ambitious environmental projects in the world: Cloud Forest in Bay South Garden of Gardens by the Bay, in Singapore. These climate-controlled spaces bring a slice of the Mediterranean to the tropics. Two structures of steel and glass contain a series of water masses in constant motion that generate the specific temperature and humidity conditions for these plants to thrive in. Beside this confined nature are aerial structures that bring visitors to the tops of the vertical gardens. The main objective was zero consumption in a project where energy use seems inevitable.