Italian designers Paolo Ulian and Moreno Ratti see potential where other designers see only waste. They say that close to 70 percent of marble is never used due to slight, practically invisible imperfections. Their work together reclaims this misfit marble by turning flat tiles into elegant, exacting designs.
piùOmeno_LED lamp. Photographs courtesy of the designers. Click to see a larger image.
The ovoid cuts in the 40 x 40 cm marble tile assemble into a vase. Click to see a larger image.
A concept behind their works is to cut back on marble waste. They carry that idea one step further by carving their designs using a water jet, maximizing the amount of material they’re able to claim from just one 40 x 40 cm tile. There’s some assembly required with their works, but it’s part of the fun.
The designers told Dezeen:
Waste is always the basis of our research, because we would like to live in a world without waste,” Ratti told Dezeen. “We were shocked when we discovered that 70 per cent of marble is wasted, so we set about designing something that could be made from the marble tiles found in dusty warehouses of our craft companies. We set ourselves the challenge of only using a water jet machine to cut and finding a way to simply assemble the pieces without creating any waste.
A bowl from the 40 x 40 collection. Click to see a larger image.
Surely a good designer should be able to create with a variety of materials. Ulian and Ratti are being both bold and responsible with their work.
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Click to see a larger image.
The designers’ “Little Gerla” vases, assembled from the same sheets of marble as in the “40 x 40” line.
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