Cersaie 2018: Two New Halls and a Packed Program of Events
Cersaie 2018, the 36th event in the show’s history, will be held in Bologna from 24 to 28 September. This year’s poster image, entitled Scacco bagno, was created by a team of students attending the “Artistic design for business” course at the Accademia di Brera, Naima Annoni, Enrica Caiello, Riccardo Piovesan and Maria Cristina Ziviani, as “a non-trivial solution coupled with a subtle sense of irony”. Their project was chosen from the 43 participants in the eighth edition of the Beautiful Ideas competition for the new Cersaie 2018 visual concept open to students at Italian universities.
The quality and value of the International Exhibition of Ceramic Tile and Bathroom Furnishings is demonstrated by the fact that virtually all the exhibition space is sold out six months before the show is due to begin. This includes the two new halls 29 and 30 which will be opened for bathroom furnishings as the first step in an extensive remodelling programme covering the entire exhibition centre.
Gianni di Gregorio, the architect who led the team tasked with renovating the Bologna exhibition centre, developed a project aimed at unifying and enhancing the existing exhibition spaces and connecting areas. This involved using a repetitive modular system to link the new halls characterised by large translucent surfaces and soft, diffused daytime lighting. The connecting areas between the halls become urban spaces that perform all exhibition functions, while the single-span halls allow for the maximum flexibility in terms of set-up and use of multilevel stands.
There will be a packed programme of events both in the Exhibition Centre and in the city of Bologna. The cultural programme Building Dwelling Thinking includes high-profile conferences with illustrious figures from the world of architecture and design, including the ninth Cersaie Keynote lecture given by a Pritzker Prize winning architect on the morning of Thursday 27 September.
For the third year running, Cersaie will also be hosting design conversations at the Press Cafés, where magazine editors will discuss topical issues with guests in the new location in the Media Village (Services Centre).
Tiling Town will host a wide range of demonstrations and technical meetings aimed specifically at tile fixers.
On Thursday 27 and Friday 28 September, Cersaie will be hosting the seventh edition of Cersaie Designs your Home, an initiative in which designers from leading Italian interior design magazines provide a consulting service to members of the public seeking advice on new home purchases or renovation projects. Last year the 17 magazines taking part offered 320 consultations to visitors out of the 5,013 members of the public present at Cersaie 2017.
For several years Cersaie has been organising a thematic exhibition. This year’s event, The sound of design curated by architect Angelo dall’Aglio and by Davide Vercelli, will link music and design. The exhibition will extend over a space of 700 square metres in the brand new hall 30 and will explore the concept of “music for spaces”, where iconic images from the period will be used in different residential and urban settings.
For the fourth year running, Cersaie will be partnering with Bologna Design Week to organise the week-long events devoted to ceramic tile and bathroom furnishings in the Bologna city centre. Starting on Tuesday 25 September, five days of product launches, exhibitions, workshops, competitions, screenings and guided tours will be held in historic buildings, art galleries, deconsecrated churches, showrooms and other venues, transforming the way participants perceive the city centre. On Wednesday 26 September it will be the turn of Design Night, which until midnight will engage with the public through a series of innovative itineraries and special openings.
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