Reinventing Terrazzo Surfaces with Olivia Aspinall

Olivia Aspinall Studio is an emerging surface design brand, offering fresh and exciting surface finishes for the interior design industry. Surfaces are characterised by their colour, pattern and craftsmanship. Olivia founded the Nottingham based studio in 2015 and since then has gone on to work on numerous bespoke projects as well as receive extensive international press coverage. ‘All of our products are hand-made in the UK.’

She says: “I like to create surfaces that make people question what goes into making the piece.”

By concentrating on fresh surface finishes for the interior design industry, Olivia has earned a growing reputation and attracted international media coverage.

Her track record as one of the first designers to create terrazzo with Jesmonite, which won material of the year at London Design Week 2017, eventually saw her partner with Formica® in what proved to be an outstanding alliance.

Olivia says: “Good design has to add something new to the world: something beautiful, or a new colour, or a new combination. That’s really important.

“We’ve taken the idea of a traditional terrazzo and made it completely customisable. We can play with the colour. We can play with the size and ratio of the chips we’re putting in. And that allows us to really design the terrazzo. We can change how a surface looks with those delicate changes of colour.”

She adds: “I like the idea of pushing a traditional surface, like terrazzo, in a different direction. We can give a really fresh feel to a traditional surface.”

Formica Chip Series

Formica has developed an inimitable version, based on a hand-made piece of terrazzo by UK based designer Olivia Aspinall.

Artificial terrazzo concept is liked by most in a variety of colourful and natural colourways. Start from classics, evolve with a playful and self-expressive design style, this surface effect is set to remain important over the upcoming seasons.

A decent black with grey and brown chips give terrazzo design a modern and classic merging. Then high-contrast black and white design could add immediate impact to interiors.