An Australian Kaleidoscope is a terrazzo collection that reflects the full rainbow spectrum painted across the environments that so profoundly influence the country’s covetable design language. An enduring muse across every facet of art, architecture and design, the vibrant hues, robust integrity, portent undertones and seemingly infinite spatial qualities of Australia’s natural landscapes have cast them time and again into the heart of visual curation.
Shaped by a complex union between visual prowess and durability, Fibonacci has drawn constant inspiration from Australia’s striking and diverse environments, taking cues from Mother Nature’s eminence to reflect that into an array of built spaces with An Australian Kaleidoscope extending and elevating this ethos.
“It’s no secret I love to draw on natural landscapes when designing colours,” affirms Fibonacci Founder Michael Karakolis. “Australian landscapes are more diverse than in any other country. I believe that our environment subconsciously influences our creativity, and here, that has led to a collection that I feel captures a combination of the ruggedness of Australia’s alpine region with the spectrum of seascapes across the country and the seasons and the prehistoric tranquility of the Kimberley rainforest.”
The first of the collection of four terrazzo’s is Hokey Pokey. Radiating with warmth and the essence of a sun-baked late afternoon, this is a stone imprinted with the joy of a lazy summer day, perhaps a holiday memory that captures the moment when the sun begins its descent and the pavements become the threshold between beach and home.
Next is Baked Coral. Reminiscent of the sandy plains of the Simpson Desert and the dunes that pepper the landscape across the Northern Territory, South Australia and central Queensland. Sunk within a red clay foundation, Baked Coral displays a striking confetti of colour, like an ocean bed stripped of its watery biome to imprint the yellows, blues, greens and maroons upon a desert landscape swathed in the heat of Australia’s red centre, where they become breathtaking carpets of wildflowers.
Third is Gecko. Inspired by one of the world’s last wilderness frontiers, the Kimberley Region, this stone is filled to the brim with fragments large and small that mimic the abundance of wildlife, the incandescent reds of the canyons, the botanical richness of the untamed rainforests and the cooling aquamarine of freshwater swimming holes.
Finally, Fruit Cake imagines the brushstrokes of Van Gogh or Henri Rousseau had they had the opportunity to paint the Australian landscape. Imagine the rich, dark depths, the gilded confetti of colour they would undoubtedly render on canvas. The impressions of scaly lizard life, brutal summer storms, colours reminiscent of the candied interior of a summertime fruitcake. Imagine bejewelled midnight expressions meeting the surface of textured stone…
The kaleidoscope of the four new slab colours converges in a collection that pays homage to the grit and tenacity of the natural landscape, the vibrant diversity of its visual poetics, and their chameleon-like ability to both define and integrate into design.
