Dutch stone brand Solid Nature and high-profile architectural practice OMA have history. They worked together on elements of the Qatar National Library, for example, and the Fondazione Prada. Then, last year, they teamed up for a sensational exhibition at Milan’s Alcova during Salone del Mobile, showcasing collaborative pieces of functional art designed to celebrate the elegance and versatility of the brand’s richly-storied stones.
With the pressure on for an equally show-stopping follow up at this year’s Milan design week, Solid Nature’s dynamic young founder David Mahyari has turned once again to OMA. Securing a venue previously unexplored by the design world – the basement and gardens of a private residence in Brera – he handed the plans to OMA partner Ellen van Loon and associate architect Giulio Margheri.
He also gave them, as a brief, a narrative that ties the unfurling of human dreams to the genesis of the brand’s intriguingly patterned stones.
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The architectural team picked it up, tossed it around and have transformed it into an impressive multi-sensory installation that leads the visitor down rainbow-hued onyx steps (made using the off-cuts from last year’s multi-coloured archway and neatly linking the two shows) into a series of stone-clad rooms, artfully designed to give the impression of walking into a mine. Monolithic blocks overhead are designed not only to showcase the material, but to invoke a feeling of pressure, something both humans and rock might undergo before emerging towards a glorious outcome.
‘There’s cross-pollination,’ says van Loon of the exhibition’s collaborative goal, explaining that the Solid Nature installations give her team the freedom to experiment with natural stone that more formal projects don’t allow. ‘For us it is a playground…a lot of the ideas that we develop in these projects we also use in other projects; it’s a testing ground.’
Stepping out from the underground caverns you enter the garden, a peaceful oasis dotted with new pieces from Solid Nature’s long-time collaborator Sabine Marcelis – an outdoor bar and striking colour-graduated glass table with colour-matched stone pedestals, which will be activated during the week by food design superstar Laila Gohar; sculptural seating from Iranian artist Bita Fayyazi made in collaboration with Solid Nature and OMA; a tribune by landscape architects Studio Ossidiana where a number of inspirational talks are due to take place and a sculpture by Ward Strootman. ’Beyond the Surface’ is set to be a mine of exceptional design. Via Cernaia 1, Milan, mdw23@solidnature.com
