Sometimes you have to color way outside the lines to arrive at a fresh take. Drawing upon her travels throughout Italy, multidisciplinary designer Alex Proba, based in Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon, mixes the serious (architectural elements like marble and terrazzo) with the quirky (foods like mortadella and salami) to achieve Aurora. The collection, marking her studio’s first foray into the tile realm, is a modern approach to traditional encaustic, made from unfired cement, sand, aggregate, pigment, and water. The 8-inch terrazzo tiles are shaped by hand using brass for crisp outlines and clear patterns. “It’s not just about the textures and colors but about offering something entirely new in a category that often feels repetitive,” Proba says. The latest entrant to Concrete Collaborative’s Strands patterned tile portfolio, Aurora encompasses six designs—Riser, Baked, Bato, Zina, Flores, and Seeker—in two colorways.
Aurora.
Portrait of Alexa Proba. Photography by Nicholas Peter Wilson.
