When Marble Becomes Art

My name is Valentina Stincone, I am an italian architect and interior designer and I currently work in Slovenia as a freelancer. I am very passionate about interior design, so much that I made or restored most of the furniture in the apartment I live in, as you can see on my instagram. https://www.instagram.com/valentinastincone/

Last year I partecipated to a competition in the beautiful city of Udine (Italy), where in 2014 I graduated in architecture. The theme of the competition was "complex simplicity", which sounded very challenging and interesting. I was struck by a process that the Lavagnoli company had on display, a knurled slab formed by sections of triangular-based prisms, in black and white marble, which changes color depending on how you look at it. A play of light and shadow, black and white that alternate and change the perception of the material. The initial project, starting from the competition theme "complex simplicity", envisaged a round arch, obtained within this worked slab and its twin rotated 180 degrees to form a seat. However, marble is a dense material and as such has its own specific weight, which in this case was a risk for the fragile wooden beams of the 1400s building in via Mercatovecchio in Udine. So, without changing the concept, the arch has shrunk and has become a piece of furniture. Nove is a mirror seat, like a two-faced Janus has two faces that speak to each other but do not look at each other: it is inspired by the kissing chairs of the Victorian era and conceptually takes up the theme of social distance to which we have become accustomed in these years marked by the pandemic. Nine in numerology is the symbol of complexity and represents the tension that is inside this object: black and white, positive and negative forms, opposite but close. It took a week for the company to cut the marble and assemble the pieces, thanks to years of experience in the field. Lavagnoli has several machineries to cut marble with the maximum details, the pieces of marble can be joined together with the precision of less than 0,1 millimeters. The marble after being cut is processed and polished by hand by skilled professionals. If you like the design and you would like to have more informations please visit the website of the company https://www.lavagnolimarmi.com/.