Pibamarmi Marmomac 2022 Pavilion

he annual stone fair in Verona, in response to an invitation from Pibamarmi, a supplier with distinct architectural sensibilities (having in previous years commissioned exhibition stands from the likes of Grafton Architects and Alberto Campo Baeza). Given parallel activities researching architectural history and teaching design theory, the challenge spontaneously coalesced into a revisiting of relationships between classical architecture, marble and contemporary aesthetics. The work of Adolf Loos, a figure preoccupied by these concerns, came straight to mind. Famously, Loos hastened the demise of ornamentation in the early 20th century. His essay Ornament and Crime linked decoration with superseded historical styles and misplaced labour, from which it was a short step to the notion of ‘mere decoration’. Yet – as befitted his contradictory, ironic, nature – Loos’s aesthetic vision admitted exotic stones legitimized by the material itself being decorative. His little American Bar (aka Loosbar) in Vienna exudes classical tectonics, symmetry and regularity, witness the coffering, the effect of which mirrors artfully multiply. Our stand – which doubles as a bar - riffs off the Loosbar while assimilating its author’s penchant for citing antique precedent, especially the Doric / Tuscan column. While playing with the temple archetype, refining proportions and adapting them to a framework of standard steel sections, we explored ambiguities in old and new ways of working marble. The technical-aesthetic possibilities of cnc cutting permitted the marble coffers to be not only monolithic but slimmed down to magical translucent wafers. The expense of this, meanwhile, was offset by precycling columns destined for another construction, and the installation, currently in crates, awaits a future reincarnation… So, is ornament really a crime, and citation too? Or have we got over certain historically-situated inhibitions?