Architect Aline Asmar d’Amman designed a series of unique functional sculptures with discarded marbles and brutalist Vicenza slabs, in collaboration with Italian heritage company Laboratorio Morseletto

 ‘The Memory of Stones’ is a collection centred around the idea of concrete poetry, a quest as ancient as the world.

Beautifying the scars left on the Vicenza stone slabs where the marble is cut and tailored, the brutalist fragments, often unseen, are elevated to the status of noble material. The scorched surfaces become objects of desire; they are used to make a series of unique pieces with transplanted marble inserts. Transformed and grafted, the marble continues the invisible relationship with the Vicenza stone where its alteration occurred, inducing a certain ‘mystique of materiality.’

The functional sculptures, made from the combination of elementary shapes and tailored rough surfaces, integrate an upcycling approach, revealing the raw beauty of stone extracted from the quarry and combined with handpicked discarded marble fragments.

The collection is a play between scarification and primary constructions, where texture and time bind together man-made memory and spontaneous beauty, echoing the connection between man and nature itself, like an abstract calligraphy. The material conversation evokes a contemporary poetic vision with elements of the past.

The title, ‘The Memory of Stones’, echoes the texts of Roger Caillois ‘The Writing of Stones’ and ‘Reading the Stones’, and his original vision infused with surrealism, science, aesthetics, myths and literature, transcending his fascination for the mineral world, a passion shared by architect Aline Asmar d’Amman.