We are happy to announce the introduction of the Escofet Collection, cast stone site elements from the Barcelona-based company renowned for its manufacture of contemporary designs by leading architects and artists. Landscape Forms is now the sole representative of Escofet products in the United States and Canada. While some of you may be familiar with Escofet, you may not know their story.
Escofet was founded in Barcelona, Spain in 1886 as a manufacturer of hydraulic tiles: indoor paving elements made of cement in which pigment is pressed into the surface as the tile is formed in a hydraulic press. Up to the 1920s, tiles made in this way were the ultimate high end flooring in the palaces of the tsars, ceremonial government buildings, and avant garde architecture, notably in the work of the renowned Catalan architect, Antoni Gaudi. In 1904 Gaudi designed the iconic six-sided tile with subtle reliefs of botanical and animal shapes that is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and now, adapted to outdoor spaces, fills the broad pedestrian zones of Barcelona’s Paseo de Gracia.
In 1916 Escofet began manufacturing outdoor paving elements for streetscapes and by mid century its cast stone pavements had become signature features of Barcelona’s urban aesthetic. In the early 1970s the company entered the building sector, creating reinforced cast stone panel facades for pre-fabricated construction – and at the end of the decade it made its debut into streetscape furniture with cast stone benches designed by leading Spanish architects. From the beginning, Escofet collaborated with forward-looking architects and artists who designed its products and used its standard and custom architectural and streetscape products on their projects. In addition to Gaudi, the company’s collaborators, whom it calls “authors,” include the artist Joan Miro and internationally celebrated architects Ricardo Bofill, Arata Isozaki, Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers and Bernard Tschumi.
In 1992 Escofet provided products and expertise on multiple large-scale projects for the Olympic Games in Barcelona and began its continued role as provider of paving and streetscape furniture in the city’s re-urbanized zones, for which it has been awarded the National Design Prize. The company is under contract to create structural columns for the realization of Gaudi’s masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. For more than two decades Escofet has grown its collection of furniture for streetscape and landscapes with a wide range of products that bring together architecture and nature, an affinity for material expression and a delight in fresh and surprising form.
Escofet is a partner with a long and impressive history, a reputation for innovative design, and deep expertise in research, material invention and industrial production. We share a belief in design as the core of our mutual enterprises and a commitment to the highest standards of production. Our most cosmopolitan and discriminating clients will recognize the Escofet name. It is now our pleasure to make Escofet products available to them from Landscape Forms, a company they know and trust, with the full service, warrantee and pledge of satisfaction they rely on.
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