EARTHIC® LAB X FORMAFANTASMA, a journey from inside new Silestone®XM collection

EARTHIC® LAB is the provocative and immersive installation that Cosentino shows these days within FuoriSalone, the exhibitions agenda that fill the streets of the city to celebrate design and arts at Milano Design Week. On this occasion, the sustainable surfaces global leading company has opted for a differential installation located in the historic Teatro Gerolamo. Within its historic walls, EARTHIC® unfold its transformation narrative. Every surface, every element, echoes the historical significance of this venue, creating an installation that transcends time, a dialogue between the past and the future where sustainability is the main character.

Conceived jointly with the Formafantasma studio, the project challenges the conventional approach to design, emphasizing the significance of production processes over mere aesthetic appeal. The core focus of EARTHIC® LAB is to take visitors on a transformative journey, showcasing the meticulous creation of EARTHIC® surfaces collection and highlighting the importance of sustainable design.

Through the Teatro different levels tour visitors can visualize the Cosentino’s innovation project on R&D, materials formulation and sustainability which is embodied in EARTHIC® capsule collection. As you step into the main space, you are enveloped in an enchanting landscape, characterized by emerging sculptures composed of EARTHIC®’s surfaces. A waterfall-like holographic screens column reigns the center of this landscape, providing a hypnotic visual, while diverse footage of the material displayed on an LED wall creates a captivating, moon-like landscape, providing an immersive exploration.

The flow of the experience is seamlessly distributed across the three floors of the Teatro, with each floor serving as a chapter in the journey through EARTHIC®’s story. From recycled PET to recycled Dekton® fragments, recycled glass and pioneering post-consumer bio-resin, each balcony narrates the story of EARTHIC®’s components formulation. Also, through video visuals and scientific data, visitors gain knowledge of sustainability while being immersed in the origins and aesthetic of the materials.

Finally, on the third balcony, Formafantasma’s interview offers a deeper understanding of the collaboration, the pivotal role of Cosentino’s journey in the collection development, and the remarkable sustainability enhancements achieved through the use of recycled, reused, and advanced raw materials. This insightful conversation emphasizes the broader significance of addressing sustainability within the industry through a focus on the process to achieve a unified design outcome.

“The installation introduces EARTHIC® by Silestone®XM collection as a response to a concern, and with an objective to improve its sustainable components. What we hope people will take away from EARTHIC® LAB is understanding the reality of the product, its components, and that design is not only about aesthetics but also about how things are produced. Very often we talk about quality in production, which is about the performance, and we talk about the aesthetic, but rarely we talk about the decision-making behind how they are made. This is extremely important to be able to make an informed decision and this installation will help visitors see that”, according to Formafantasma.

EARTHIC® by Silestone®XM

EARTHIC® by Silestone®XM is a capsule collection, that will release to market next May, with new designs containing a maximum silica content of 10%, but that also advances in an innovative composition in which it is used a selection of premium minerals, recycled glass, PET, bio-resin, and Dekton® fragments, with the aim of reducing raw materials extraction and limiting CO₂ emissions. And, thanks to HybriQ+® technology, these colors are produced with 100% renewable electrical energy and 99% recycled water.

For EARTHIC® by Silestone®XM, Cosentino has partnered with Formafantasma, a research-based design studio, leading by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, investigating the ecological, historical, political and social forces shaping the design discipline today. With EARTHIC®, the Spanish leading company and the studio propose a new sustainable approach to surface design.

According to Andrea and Simone, “since the beginning, the aim of EARTHIC was to establish a surface project as well as a sub-brand within Cosentino that could become a research platform to investigate how the company could make their processes more sustainable. We did not start from an aesthetic but from the idea of improving the sustainable components within the surface. Our collaboration with Cosentino is exactly this: an attempt to design a product from the inside out where the aesthetic choices also correspond to ethical and sustainable choices. Decision making from this perspective is what is relevant for design today at large”. 

EARTHIC® LAB X FORMAFANTASMA installation HR images available here