Dezeen Magazine

"We never use strong colours for our tiles" - Patricia Urquiola

Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola talks to Dezeen about her new tile collection for Italian brand Mutina in this movie filmed at the Domus showroom during Clerkenwell Design Week.

"We never use strong colours with our tiles"

Called Azulej, Urquiola's new collection of porcelain tiles features 27 different patterns, including a mixture of geometric and floral designs, available in white, grey and black colour palettes.

"We never use strong colours with our tiles"

"The idea of Mutina was always to defend the idea of ceramic tiles as very natural," says Urquiola. "We never use colours that are strong, always quite natural."

"We never use strong colours with our tiles"

Azulej is Urquiola's fourth tile collection for Mutina, and the first to feature digitally printed patterns.

"This year, possibly after all of the work we have done with my studio and other studios, we [decided] to work with printing and with patterns," Urquiola says. "[Azulej is] a quite industrial tile, very simplified, 20 x 20 cm."

"We never use strong colours with our tiles"

Urquiola believes that the success of her continued collaboration with Mutina is down to her good relationship with the company, which appointed her as art director in 2011.

"We never use strong colours with our tiles"

"The best [projects] I got were always coming from good relations with people I like," she says. "In the case of Mutina especially, when they asked me to become art director, [which] is not normally something I want to do, I said: 'okay.'"

"We never use strong colours with our tiles"
Patricia Urquiola

See all our stories from Clerkenwell Design Week 2013 »

The music featured in this movie is a track called Octave by Junior Size, released by French record label Atelier du Sample . You can listen to more Junior Size tracks on Dezeen Music Project.