Illusion, imagination, dream, utopia: this is the mix of ingredients of “Hotel Chimera”, the Milanese installation investigating the potentials of this collection, created at Spazio CEDIT in the heart of Brera district. Florim’s technological research coupled with Elena Salmistraro’s creative flair has resulted in “Chimera”: offering a completely original expressive interpretation, the designer reinvents the ceramic product in a unique, individual way laden with symbolic meaning. Highly decorative, “Chimera” invites sensory enjoyment and the large porcelain stoneware slabs create a fantastic universe inspired by nature and the chimera of the “grotesque” tradition, featuring very tactile and striking carved or raised designs. “Hotel Chimera” is space where we can escape from and evade reality, achieved by combining a heterogeneous mixture of elements. “It’s not easy to convey the spirit of such a broad collection with a single installation. Hence the idea for Hotel Chimera, is a sort of non-place, a location free of all ties and bonds to reality, and above all that brings a variety of components together to create a crucible for images, where the artificial reigns supreme,” the collection’s designer Elena Salmistraro explains. Conceived as a journey through time, the installation traverses the sequence of 20C design movements with the aid of the collection’s graphic themes. It starts from the Hall, clad with “Empatia” slabs, which construct an interior based on Art Deco images, with an alternation of black and white forming modules and geometric shapes. On the opposite side is the lounge area, representing the Modernist Movement through “Ritmo” slabs, freely inspired by the work of leading Bauhaus figures Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers. On a second level, “Radici” and “Colore” slabs: the former reference the animalier trends of the Radical period while the latter expresses the hyper-decorative contemporary style. The collection’s range and installation are completed by a series of neutral continuous coverings. The result is a set of original ceramic surfaces laden with symbolic meaning. Creativity and innovation: The large porcelain stoneware slabs of “Hotel Chimera” and the collection itself give rise to a fantastic universe inspired by nature and by the “grotesque” tradition, result of imaginative combination of different figures. Through a three-dimensional development, made possible by innovative production technologies, the large slabs reproduce leathers’ texture and wefts and warps of fabrics, creating an original and extremely tactile layered effect, with suggestive figures decorated in groove or relief along with a completely unusual chromatic vivacity. Respect for the environment and the people: “Chimera” fine porcelain stoneware slabs comply with Florim process, environmental and energy certifications. Florim is now a Benefit Corporation and Certified B Corp, an evolutionary way of doing business. We vied with the highest social and environmental performance standards, and we decided to change our articles of association, formalizing Florim’s commitment to work for the common good. Functionality: with “Hotel Chimera” Elena Salmistraro confirms once again her talent as an artist and designer with incomparable communicative power. CEDIT large ceramic slabs are the perfect medium for her inspiration since they offer both visual and tactile potentials, together with the indisputable advantages of porcelain stoneware materials ‘made in Florim’.