Whatever happened to the tile-clad house?
In his article for the Finantial Times, Edwin Heathcote explores what many of us are thinking when we see colourful ceramic facades around the world – 'Why do we not have more of these decorating the fabric of our cities?' Or are we not looking closely enough...
'The most explosive contemporary addition to the genre is Charles Holland and artist Grayson Perry’s A House for Essex (2015) in south-east England. An exuberant tiled fantasy squishing up everything from Post Modernism and mythical dragons to Essex churches and Russian Orthodox chapels, it could have — and should have — kick-started a ceramic tile revival. It did not, quite.
But there are glimmers of hope: not quite, perhaps, the exuberant all-over cladding of the azulejo-tiled houses but tile reappearing as a highlight. Denizen Works’ Haddo Yard apartments (2017) in Whitstable, a coastal town in south-east England, feature 3D decorative tile panels with a kind of crystalline stealth geometry.'
Read more on the FT here.
