Decorative trends suggested by ALICER

The generation of new ideas is a continuous constant exercise in the ALICER Department of Trends, in collaboration, for this 2007 event, with the designer Simonetta Carta, the illustrators Rosina Reig and Adrián Blanca Méndez, and the young designers from the Polytechnic Institute of Turin (Italy), Silvia Marazzi and Selena Isabello.  

Such an ongoing exercise also occurs in the study and in-depth analysis of the trends or possible movements that could emerge as trends, since trends do not move in a straight line, but have their troughs, waves, and zigzag movements. Sometimes they constitute underground currents for decades, emerging at a given point in time with great force and sweeping along all in their path. 

ALICER’s studies and researches have thus led to a several lines of work, proposals aimed at converting these currents into ceramic products, impulses, lifestyles, forms of behaviour, etc., analysed through detailed study of the world’s foremost trends reports, such as those issued by Promostyl, Nelly Rodi, etc. The lines of work suggested by ALICER complete previous proposals, since an aesthetic stream is prolonged in time in regard to both the product class offered and the production sector it comes from.

As a conclusion of the work done to date, and in response to the new expectations, some of the starting concepts are set out below, there always remaining the possibility of adding to or completing any of these notes.

Naturalness
Nature is not overcome but followed…; naturalness is lack of artifice and also lack of violence, of effort in emotion, of exaggeration. Naturalness belongs to spontaneity, freshness, simplicity. Nature remains an inexhaustible resource; in the foregoing show, mention was made of functional bucolic in referring to products which, reproducing nature, contributed a particular function. 

This proximity to nature emerges fully nowadays with tangible evidence since, in addition to reproducing or interpreting nature, we seek to feel it and to feel immersed in it. This requires capturing its essence and that means studying its structures, growth, rhythm, colour…, which becomes a highly fruitful exercise.

Elegance, brightness, immateriality
Products are involved that cultivate the noble and the beautiful; the exquisite, fine, refined, select, harmonious… the concept of elegance is applied to the spiritual and to the material, and is synonymous with distinction, simplicity, moderation, or sobriety. Streamlined elegance; absence of the superfluous; quest for the essential; plays of light and shade; aerial structures very close to and in coexistence with nature through the elements; seeing and feeling the water, air, highlights and reflections… An exercise in synthesis is pursued; a challenge for the creator who needs to capture quintessential, timeless beauty. It is the triumph of lines, subtleness, transparency, style, and poetry.

Passion and excess voluptuousness
When passion guides us, we pursue actions that heed feelings and not reason. This line of work corresponds to a passional, visceral spirit, and emerges in contrast to elegance. A quest for emotions is involved through references to other cultures, exotism, luxury, opulence, or splendour. Craftwork, embossing, crocheting, and lacing are valorised; as are gold- and silversmithing, and precious stones and materials: it is the triumph of colour and voluptuous shapes, while concurrently strengthening theatricality and dramatic quality, seeking to turn humdrum daily scenarios into fantastic settings. Baroque solutions are propounded that transform daily objects into luxury items.

Magic, fantasy, the oneiric
This line, reflecting a dreaming restless spirit, recreates surprising changing effects, emotion-arousing products that recreate the senses, that help create agreeable atmospheres in which dream and reality converge, constituting an oasis for the mind and relaxation for the body. These are products to be contemplated, of spell-binding ambients. It is sought to feed body and soul; awaken the senses, the emotions.

Illustrating, narrating, representing
In this line of exploration, graphic designs command the surfaces: of walls, floors, furniture, facades, and even of the human body. The desire is transmitted of illustrating, narrating, re-creating landscapes, floral patterns, ornaments of different art periods, as well as personages, stories, and legends. Here one observes, reflected, the aesthetics of the comic, of graffiti, of illustration techniques done by hand, for instance with watercolours, gouaches, pencils and labellers, or collages.

Questioning, interrogating, exploring
This line explores the possibilities that materials provide for new forms, new applications, new performances, and therefore for developing alternatives to existing embodiments. For many professionals, examining bounds and crossing them constitute a satisfying exercise in risk and daring, yielding unusual, bold, singular, unique products. A hotel below the sea, a mountain of roses as a building, a stadium in a volcano of turf …

The functional
These are functional products that provide an answer to a particular problem, by improving and adapting to the function they need to perform, while at the same time containing the aesthetic features. The example selected in this section is the Logan car, which was granted an award by the French Design Observatory in the section: “Proposing a fair design for a fair price”.

Solidarity
Solidarity is a word that means union. The word comes from the Latin soliditas, which means solidness, solidity, and solidus, which means whole, complete, entire. As emperor Marcus Aurelius said: “All things are joined to each other by a sacred knot, all beings are coordinated as a whole, and everything concurs to the harmony of the same world”. Indeed, we are not alone. Whatever our origin and circumstance we cannot live far from our fellow men for too long, nor can we cease to count on each other. We need one another to develop and realise the full potential of our capabilities: “Solidarity unites those who consider that they benefit from their own actions with those who consider themselves affected by the same problems, fighting for the same interests”.