A visitor pavilion cut from the marble it was built to explain.
The trust needed a place to explain six centuries of quarrying to visitors. They did not want a museum, but a shelter at the quarry edge where the stone could explain itself.
The pavilion is built from marble blocks rejected by the quarry for small flaws. Each block is laid as it came out of the mountain.
Client
Carrara Marble Trust
Location
Carrara, Italy
Year
2022
Scope
Visitor pavilion
Area
220 m²
Status
Completed
Collaborators
Studio Ferri, structure
Photography
Studio Void
THE SITE
Building on the lip of a working quarry.
The pavilion sits on a ledge overlooking an active face. We set the walls along the old cut lines so the building reads as part of the quarry.
A single opening frames the working face below. Visitors watch blocks being cut from the same stone they are standing in.
“The building is the first exhibit.”
Director — Carrara Marble Trust
Three materials, two of them from the mountain.
Stone
Rejected Carrara blocks
Marble set aside by the quarry for veins and flaws, laid uncut.
Metal
Weathering steel
Roof edges and doors that rust to the colour of the quarry track.
Glass
Single frameless pane
One opening, framing the working face below.
PROCESS
Sketch to site.
01
Sketch
Walking the quarry ledges with the cutters.
02
Plan
Walls drawn along the old cut lines.
03
Render
Blocks chosen one at a time in the reject yard.
04
Built
Assembled by quarry crews with their own cranes.