Place
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Tiles, Repetition and Patience
Lisbon's azulejos are a lesson in systems: one small square, repeated until it becomes a façade.
From the series · A Lisbon Notebook
By Mara Ellison · Lisbon
The first design system I ever fell in love with was a wall. A whole building in the Alfama, covered in blue and white tiles, each one about fourteen centimetres square. Up close, a single tile is a small, slightly clumsy drawing. From across the street, a thousand of them become a pattern that feels inevitable.[1]
One unit, many surfaces
A tile does not know which wall it will end up on. It only knows how to meet its neighbours: the pattern at its edges continues into the next one. That is the whole trick, and it is the same trick a good component library tries to pull off.
Imperfection as texture
Hand-painted tiles are never identical. The blue pools differently, a line wobbles. Repeated across a façade, those small differences stop reading as mistakes and start reading as life.[2]
What I try to copy
Design the edges first: how a piece meets its neighbours.
Leave room for small variation within a strict system.
Step back often. A system is judged from across the street.[3]
Notes
The National Tile Museum in Lisbon is the best afternoon in the city, and almost never crowded.
Some restorers deliberately repaint replacement tiles a little unevenly so they don't stand out.
I have a photo of that first wall as my desktop background. It has been there for three laptops.
Written by
Mara Ellison
Product designer in Lisbon. Writes about quiet software, attention and the slow craft of making things.
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