CEMENT TILES :

I have always loved the cement tiles that you find in old houses, especially in rather dark corridors, kitchens and the basement kitchens that in Brussels used to be reserved for servants. These humble reminders of past lives always seemed to me to be brimming with stories, and not only those of the people who used them and gave them a slight patina, but also the story of changing tastes which can be read in them like a book. The exuberance and multiplicity of motifs seemed to me to be so rich in imagination that our modern coverings seemed to be short of ideas, even the most luxurious of them. So I have often used them as "recovered materials" for my architectural projects, which compelled me to compose ingenious patchworks because the quantities found never matched the number needed. Necessity bred a style that was, of course, rather limited and complicated to use. So I was delighted to discover a new lease of life for these tiles when I learned that, unlike Europe where the manufacture of these tiles came to an end in the 'fifties, Morocco was still making them in quantity. Since then, I have also contributed to telling the story of the changes in taste below our feet, by re-using old motifs drawn from the Moroccan culture, or by designing others. (...)