Porcelain Stooneware Cladding at Colosseo Metro Station | Casalgrande Padana

Casalgrande Padana produces advanced ceramic materials, developing innovative, ecological solutions that can meet diverse creative and technological requirements. The Colosseo Metro Station in Rome has been tiled using the Pietre di Paragone porcelain stoneware collection in the color Gré Nero.

The Colosseo station is located within a setting of considerable archaeological and urban value. For this reason, the design infrastructure was required to respond by creating a dialogue with its surroundings. During construction, the project team discovered a series of wells that became key to the spatial narrative, serving as a metaphor for the role of archeology in digging out significant traces of the past. Similarly, the underground station appears rather like a huge well that brings to light the fragments and stories of a remote past.

The space that makes up the station is defined by three key elements: a matt, “unpolished” cladding material that forms the general backdrop, in the sense of a virtually dark, material casing; a bright, “precious” material tasked with identifying the elements that shape the archaeological narrative and the spatial experience of the materials that are part of it, and lighting: used to create a distinctive atmosphere, and combinig public archaeology with an everyday cultural experience.

The dark grey cladding material used for both flooring and vertical surfaces draws attention to the dimensions of the spaces, and together with the incisions in the architectural layouts obtained by sanding, gives a museum-like appearance to the through areas and the surface connections, creating an immersive space projected towards the monument above.

Project Data