“Casalgrande Ceramic Cloud’s opening with a suggestive virtual preview during Milan’s design week.

A fluctuating organza veil, both transparent and impalpable divides the most secluded court among the set-up areas at Milan’s Università Statale for the events organized by Interni Think Tank.

The organza selected to represent the concept of space partition is at once a flexible, changing and ambivalent material: every gentle blow of wind is enough to fly it, as weel as every ray of light can easily cross it to make it gleam.

Through the CCCWall installation Casalgrande Padana and the master Kengo Kuma confirmed their presence at the important Milanese Fuorisalone 2010 event.

If during the day the set-up is impalpable and evanescent, separating two ideal gardens – both similar and different, of white ceramic tiles and marble cobble -, when the sun sets the real magic takes shape and unveils the effect of lights and shapes of the ceramic tiles of the "Casalgrande Ceramic Cloud". Projected on the semi-transparent and unstopping organza sheet, the model displays the passing of time as it will happen in the actual architectural work; the effect is illusive as it is told by the original video made by StudioVisuale, for a truly charming and dramatic effect.

The installation, made of allusive material and projected luminous signs, is an abstraction of Kengo Kuma’s actual first architecture ever done in Italy, currently about to be completed near the headquarters of Casalgrande Padana, where a large filtering device made of ceramic slabs, just like in Milan’s set-up, divides the circular space of a large roundabout. The architecture is complex and caused the far-seeing Company not only to choose master Kengo Kuma and his staff as the main counterparts, helped by Mario Nanni di Viabizzuno for the lighting project, but also to involve the academic world, namely, the Department of Architecture of the Universities of Ferrara and Siracusa and their professors Alfonso Acocella and Luigi Alini, thus triggering an innovative interaction process of corporate processes, project culture, research and university education.

The space-courtyard at Milan’s Università Statale was the ideal environment to announce Kengo Kuma’s first architectural effort in Italy; a silent and secluded space suitable to experimenting and translating the key element to Casalgrande Padana’s production into a virtual set-up; the exhibition promenade that took place between Cortile della Ca’ Granda del Filarete and the window at La Rinascente in Piazza Duomo. Here, right before the eyes of the international public a video interview to Kengo Kuma comments the vertical stoneware slabs accurately suspended and showing, between their joints, the plan view of the architecture to be shortly opened near Casalgrande Padana.

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