Description from Itai Paritzki & Paola Liani Architects
The two level exposition space is adjacent to the workshop and storage area: marbles, travertine, stones, granites from all over the world. The visual connection between the untouched blocks , complete in their innate beauty, is a pathway signed by a dark rough granite wall, incised by thin and unexpected cuts enabling water to gently run through. Drops produce alternating sounds revealing the material’s intimate nature. The staircase in the main entrance is covered with fusion fire granite, composed and placed so its veins would coincide with the walking route. Once upstairs, is a wall made of vertical irregular knife plates of lasa stone, overlapping and composing a diaphanous textile.
A wall of vanishing stone, exposed to different gradients of light, reveals slender slices of material and filaments. The gallery of precious stones is a place of imagination and fantasy: panels of agate, quartz, crystals, obsidian are backlit creating vivid and unexpected tones and colors. The liquidity, the wavy movement of veins and infinite drawings are stabilized by a simple aqua green undulated cladding. In the last niche the back light behind the onyx designs a place of vague contours. On ground floor a crossing central route is marked by thresholds separating four exposition spaces. One is found suspended between evidence and surprise. From the first room, sandwiched by two walls of overlapping sivec marble straps, appears a black granite wall. The black-on-black is composed of different types of finishing that magnify the material’s tactile quality. In the second room the metamorphosis is narrated by the use of various stones as functional blocks.
The significance of material is given by the value of color, by the rigors of structure and form as appears in the bookmatching cut. The blocks are suspended from the polished calacatta marble pavement, while the rigorous walls, covered with the same calacatta marble, assume the aspect of a cloudy fabric. In the third room the pureness of the osso travertine is evidenced by placing of panels in different motifs: on the left, panels are separated by subtle brass profiles, while on the right, they are signed by 5 cm wide strips of oxidized travertine. The rest is covered with the exuberant verde bamboo. The room is illuminated with a backlit polycarbonate ceiling, a fragment of a winter garden. The last room is the blue room, solemn and crazy. The multi-colored marbles are colorful graffiti, miniature worlds, expressive faces, lunar landscapes in small trapezoidal and triangular rooms. The bookmatched finishing of these microcosms is endlessly reflected in the mirrors positioned in vis-à vis, the rest is painted with a profound prussian blue, like in a fairy tale.
