Carlos Jiménez

The Nerja Collection

Carlos Jiménez is a designer from Almería, where he currently works from his own studio. His work centers on the design of a product, having worked across various modes of design within furnishings, lighting, accessories and industrial design together with clients from all over the world.

When Carlos learned that he was going to create a collection of terracotta tiles for a company from Malága, he immediately associated this southern region with the 1980s. The Costa del Sol was a hugely popular region during this decade and underwent an important period of growth. Searching for references to Málaga from this period, Carlos found inspiration in the popular Spanish television series Verano Azul. The series was filmed entirely in Nerja, to the east of Málaga, and so he centered his initial search on this sun-kissed town. After a period of research, the idea struck him: he would create a clay terrazzo on a large scale.

By studying different pieces of terrazzo flooring, he identified certain geographic forms which he then arranged in a scattered manner against a backdrop of color. This became a starting point for Carlos Jiménez, who then went on to develop shapes which could be used to create compositions which are seemingly random and dynamic.

If we take a look at the todobarro catalog, we are struck by its large degree of geometric perfection, not just in terms of the formats themselves, but also in the tessellations that they combine to create. The Nerja Collection breaks with this tendency towards rhythm and order, instead proposing the creation of irregular geometric forms for a more contrasting aesthetic.

During the design phase and following a number of different tests, Carlos arrived at the idea of dividing a perfect square into four different pieces. The result is two irregular triangles and two irregular trapezoids. All of these pieces stem from a 30×30 square, and each one includes one side of the original square. Thus, any one of the pieces could be combined with any number of the existing pieces in our catalog. Moreover, each slab can be combined with the others and with itself, meaning that the four pieces can be used to create as many as 10 different irregular forms. Finally, Carlos was able to verify that all of these forms could be used to create the sensation of a terrazzo on a large scale.

At this point, Carlos continued to play with the possibilities enabled by his pieces and went on to create a number of different tessellations. What each one of them has in common is that they present irregular geometric motifs, making them highly dynamic and alluring to the observer. He also considered the possibility of creating tessellations which would use only some of the pieces, without needing to involve all four of the different shapes.