A showroom for a signature of excellence in the marble sector made entirely of marble?
It takes place in Milan, where the Nendo studio took care, back in 2020, of the realization of this project for Marsotto, an ancient stone, and a marble workshop. Here’s what you need to know about this unique project!
The project
“A place dedicated to the entire company’s production, in a combination of history, ancient craft techniques, and sophisticated technologies. The permanent space, designed by Studio Nendo, was conceived for the meeting and exchange of ideas between architects, designers, artists, art and design lovers.”
That is what we can read on Marsotto’s website about their showroom in the picturesque Brera district of Milan. The well-known Veronese company dedicated to the making of projects in marble and stone worldwide has entrusted the Japanese studio Nendo with the making of its Milanese exhibition space.
Developed on the ground floor and in the basement, it aims at the exhibition of marble furniture, many items and samples of processed materials. In the entrance on the first floor, a marble partition wall was carved as if it were a net to cover the staircase in front. This gives an optical effect of almost transparency and lightness, recalling, in fact, the perception that we have as soon as we enter a space entirely covered with such a marble. While the level on the ground floor is dedicated to the interaction with marble processing techniques, the basement is structured to allow visitors to enjoy the charm of marble freely and to its full potential.
This space is divided into 4 areas, equipped with 5 exhibition boxes: on the walls of one of these, with a circular shape, we find stone samples that can be touched. Below them, we find stools of different finishes that allow the customer to view the final yield. Then we find elements for the kitchen, decoration items, and shelves, all strictly in marble.
The marble
Marble makes up the entire façade of the showroom, but the entrance has been designed in such a way as to get a balanced and harmonious optical effect with the surrounding buildings. Plus, since the roundabout in front of the showroom will soon be turned into a small park, a small recess has been created on a part of the façade as a bench, in the hope that people will sit down and find a moment of peace surrounded by so much beauty.
To emphasize the many optical games, the sinuous lines and the brightness of the space, they opted for white and light gray marble, in pure variants or with light veins that capture the eye without distracting the viewer, who finds themselves immersed and surrounded by this world made of marble. Both shades have always been synonymous with prestige and elegance and here, combined, they give life to a space that, despite being modern, seems suspended in time with its beauty.
The study
The architect Oki Sato founded, in Tokyo in 2002, the Nendo studio, a Japanese term that means “clay” and that expresses the plastic and sculptural vocation, the idea of ductility and playfulness with which Nendo approaches every project, ranging from interior architecture to the world of furniture, from fittings to graphics. The Nendo studio, formed by a team of forty young designers and architects each specialized in a different field, stands out for the freedom of its design and its ability to give life to simple objects and furnishings, but surprising in their unique yield. In 2005, he opened a branch in Milan, followed in 2012 by the one in Singapore. Some of Nendo’s projects are exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Source: www.marmomac.com
