The elegant set-ups and calibrated lights forming the backdrop to the frenetic coming and going of visitors during an exhibition are only the point of arrival for a path that, in the case of stone architecture, actually starts off from huge quarry blocks.
The processing stage is the fundamental premise whereby dialogue between designers and companies underlies the success of each installation. An unusual backstage helps reveal the stages in this journey for the installation designed by Cino Zucchi for Marmomac 2019, as part of the Stone Gardens exhibition.
Protagonists: Designer
A welcome return by architect Cino Zucchi from Milan, who has already been a protagonist of the cultural initiatives at the heart of the Verona trade exhibition on several occasions. He was among the winners in 2009 of the XI edition of the International Stone Architecture Award thanks to the building in the Portello district of Milan; in 2015, he was a member of the Jury for the XIV edition of the Award as well as the designer of New Karnak, a skewed stone wedge crossed by steps in Ivory White Vicenza Stone produced for the Lithic Vertigo exhibition. Marmomac 2019 welcomed the “stalagmite forest” designed by CZA named Sharawaggi; is derives from the proportional variation of an hourglass-shaped element repeated several times and superimposed to form potentially infinite totem columns.
Protagonists: Company
The input by Franco Umberto Marmi & Co was not limited merely to the implementation of purely production aspects. As Zucchi himself said: “today we have increasingly sophisticated technologies for processing materials, which perfect the relationship between what we can do and the resistances of materials themselves. Architects and designers work in tandem with companies, since every technological innovation seeks its own shape and architects always try to experiment with new shapes. Numerical control of cutting makes it possible today to achieve unprecedented precision in the production of forms all but derived from pure geometry, yet it is this technical resistance that once again draws its essence out of the stone.”
