A collaboration between Kohler WasteLAB and Beruit-based multidisciplinary designer Nada Debs, the Transcendence tile collection from Ann Sacks is both an artistic expression and experiment in sustainability.
The Kohler WasteLAB is part of Kohler’s in-house start-up Innovation for Good, an “incubator designed to explore products and solutions for pressing global, social and environmental issues.” By producing tiles made from pottery off-cuts otherwise intended for the dump, wastewater sludge and other waste and by-products, the lab has diverted more than 73,426 pounds of waste from landfills. Transcendence by Nada Debs is the third such tile collection and is made from nearly 100 per cent recycled waste materials, namely pottery scraps.
Merging a sustainable medium with Debs’s multi-disciplinary art, the Transcendence collection is thoughtful, ecologically sound and boasts an understated elegance with a calm and soothing nature-based colour palette.
Inspired by Debs’s previous work designing traditional Middle Eastern hammams, the pattern of the tiles in the Transcendence collection are defined by sweeping archways and the timeless power of repetition, and are intended to express the restorative effects of bathing and cleansing.
In describing the architectural influence behind her Transcendence collection for Kohler WasteLAB, Debs notes that “arches reflect the architecture of the past, it is one of our most ancient design elements and by its very shape, creates a calming, almost spiritual effect within a room.”
Each of the tiles are hand-crafted and have a near-imperceptible stepped face that pool the proprietary thin glaze in low areas, which results in darker pigmentations once the clay has been fired in the kiln. Two watery colourways were selected by Debs – Turquoise and Lake – that take on a delicate crackle after baking.
Ideal for wall installations in bathrooms and spas as well as for backsplashes and fireplace surrounds, the Transcendence collection by Kohler WasteLAB and Nada Debs comes in two formats – a 15.2-by-15.2-centimetre square with three patterns (Single Arch, Double Arch and Double Vertical) and a 7.6-by-40.4-centimetre rectangle in four patterns (right- and left-facing Single Arch and right- and left-facing Double Arch). The two blues and all patterns can be used uniformly or mixed and matched for hue and pattern to create vivid applications.
