Biomimetic Design and Chemistry
Lamberti's Tenagreen selected for ADI Index 2024
We have been selected, with Lamberti Ceramic Division, among Italian design excellence and included in the ADI Index for our Tenagreen additive system, developed for ceramic slabs of various thicknesses, including those made with "lean" clays.
Every year, the Association for the Industrial Design ADI, selects the best production of the Italian design and presents them in yearbook – The ADI Index- , a dedicated website and a series of exhibitions. Only the products selected in the ADI Design Index can participate to the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award, the most authoritative design award worldwide.
Design in the face of complexity
It could be strange that a specialty chemical compound is recognized as a design product but, as explained by the ADI scientific committee:
[...] “The sustainability of the solutions has become an essential starting point for the design but when, compared to previous years, there is now a certain reluctance to use environmental claims when not supported by objective data.[....]
In this approach, the design (or redesign) of products and production techniques, attention to the use of easily recyclable or reusable materials and components and the focus on disassembly (in order to promote repairability) are at the centre of almost all the selected works, many of which have been the trigger for more general processes of corporate reorganization. This is so because the complexity brought on by sustainability is also decisive in undermining the cascading organizational models of companies in favor of horizontal and collaborative models.
Consequently, [...] innovation is often there but you can’t see it, because it is at work inside companies, and design almost seems to take on an ephemeral quality, a kind of substantial but formless substrate. [...] The new, when it exists, is therefore hidden and responds above all to criteria of efficiency and production rationalization and to constraints dictated by the circular economy”.
Laura Badalucco, Makio Hasuike, Domenico Sturabotti, Laura Traldi, Francesco Zurlo from the ADI Design Permanent Observatory Scientific Committee
Inspired by Nature, The Intelligence of Matters
In this context, Tenagreen—a synthetic-natural grafted copolymer—integrates seamlessly into the ceramic microstructure of slabs, much like structural fibers in wood are embedded in natural compound (hemicellulose) to provide flexibility and resilience. By significantly reducing embedded energy, Tenagreen enhances both the flexibility and durability of ceramic slabs, even those as thin as 2 mm, establishing a precise role in the design of modern ceramics."