Inalco x Rimadesio: A Partnership Built on Surface
Some collaborations happen because two brands need each other. Inalco and Rimadesio's happened because they think the same way. Inalco produces MDi, a full-body mineral surface where the pattern runs through the entire slab rather than sitting on top of it. Rimadesio designs furniture systems where the surface is the architecture, sliding doors, wall panelling, walk-in wardrobes built around clean, uninterrupted planes. Put those two philosophies together and the result is furniture that looks like it was carved from a single block of material, not assembled from parts.
Since September 2020, Rimadesio's Modulor wall panelling system and Graphis sliding doors have had a permanent home in Inalco's own atelier in Alcora, dressed in three specific finishes:
Modulor wall panelling, clad in Jasper moka (bush-hammered finish) and Meteora gris (bush-hammered finish).
Graphis Plus sliding doors, clad in Umbra marron (bush-hammered finish).
The space was built specifically for architects, developers and contractors, giving them somewhere to see the material's expressive range and Rimadesio's customisation up close before specifying it into a real project.
What makes this work rather than just a nice finish is the thickness. Rimadesio uses Inalco's thin-format iTOPKer fronts, as little as 4mm, which lets a full mineral surface wrap a sliding door or a panel without adding bulk or weight to the mechanism. The door still glides the way a Rimadesio door is supposed to glide. It just does it wearing stone.
Giuseppe Bavuso, the architect behind several of Rimadesio's key pieces, has spent close to three decades as art director for some of the furniture industry's biggest names. Asked what drew him to Inalco's material, his answer was straightforward: the technical properties, non-absorbent, highly resistant, easy to work with, mean it earns its place in furniture design on merit, not just aesthetics. That is the difference between a decorative cladding and a genuine collaboration. Rimadesio was not looking for a pretty finish to slap onto an existing product. It needed a surface that could perform inside a precision sliding mechanism, and Inalco built one.
For architects and designers specifying at this level, the Inalco x Rimadesio atelier is a useful reference point. It shows what MDi can do beyond worktops and floors, cladding a moving door, wrapping a panel, holding its pattern edge to edge on a piece of furniture that gets touched and used daily. If a fabricator can make that work reliably, it can handle almost anything else you throw at it.
As Inalco's exclusive UK distribution partner, PietraCasa is where that expertise translates into real projects, from design consultation through to fabrication and installation of bespoke furniture using Inalco MDi.