Ceramic Chairs That Double as Storage: The New York Experiment Redefining Author-Made Tile
Tile Wars · trends · · Tile Wars
Architect Massimiliano Malagò unveils "On the Calculation of Volume" in Greenpoint: ceramic tile becomes a domestic language, with glazed bases echoing New York terracotta facades and subway tiles, integrated storage and seemingly liquefied geometries.
Architect Massimiliano Malagò has unveiled "On the Calculation of Volume – Mania New Yorkea", a domestic intervention in a Greenpoint apartment in New York, developed with client Kathleen Pongrace, former marketing director of the iconic Strand Bookstore. The project translates the pressures of urban living —soaring housing costs, minimal space and constant transformation— into a collection of furniture in which ceramic tile takes centre stage as both a narrative and a functional material.
The chairs combine glazed ceramic bases, plywood, aluminium storage components and bio-synthetic foam. The tiled surfaces reference the New York vocabulary directly: glazed terracotta facades, white subway tiles and utilitarian city surfaces. The choice is not only aesthetic: ceramic withstands everyday wear —including from the client's cat— and resolves the conflict between durability and intense domestic use.
The most striking formal gesture is the apparent "liquefaction" of the ceramic. The tiles are arranged in droplet-like geometries, as if the material had softened, evoking the accumulation and blurring of time. By contrast, the foam seating is designed to deteriorate with use, drawing a clear material line between permanence and decay. Another chair incorporates cavities for flowers, adding a third temporal layer through living organic elements.
Storage is built directly into the furniture: concealed compartments, metal brackets and slide-in pockets address the spatial pressure typical of New York apartments. One piece also nods to the architectural vernacular of Greenpoint and Williamsburg and includes openings beneath the seat where the cat can take shelter, turning the object into a small inhabited architecture.
From a professional standpoint, the project is of interest to the Spanish ceramic industry for an obvious reason: it confirms the return of small-format tile as an authored material, able to compete in high-end design alongside wood, stone or metal. The North American market, where large formats dominate the contract segment, leaves room for a more expressive ceramic with an artisanal reading and narrative weight —precisely the territory in which Castellón and Spanish design studios have been working for years.
Malagò's work also points to an interesting path for manufacturers: thinking of tile beyond the horizontal or vertical wall and floor plane, integrating it into furniture, storage and domestic objects. A hybrid category —between architecture, interior design and product— that opens up high-value niches at a moment when the European industry is seeking to differentiate itself from standardised Asian product.
In short, "Mania New Yorkea" is not only a conceptual exercise on literature and urban life: it is a reminder that ceramic remains a material capable of building narrative, identity and differentiation. And that, for the Spanish sector, is a strategic opportunity.
TileIndustry CeramicTile TileDesign CeramicFurniture SpanishCeramics NewYorkDesign