SolidNature Studio Ossidiana

About Studio Ossidiana

Studio Ossidiana is a practice based in Rotterdam that works at the crossroads of architecture and design, led by Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini. Balancing research and fabrication, the practice explores innovative approaches through research, materials, objects, installations, and buildings.

Q&A with Studio Ossidiana

What was the brief for this project?
We were asked to design a tribune in the garden, for conversations and presentations. We interpreted the tribune as a ‘piccolo teatro’, a mineral theatre for small and big talks during the Salone. Being in a garden, we thought it would become a small observatory where to follow talks, but also look at other guests, as well as birds and other visitors of the garden: along with sitting space for people, are three pigeon towers reserved for very posh Milanese birds who might attend the events. At the center, a gravel-filled courtyard is a place for performances, lectures, dances, a mineral canvas where one can also just draw ephemeral bas reliefs during a break.

What was the inspiration for your pieces?
We thought of a variation on Elizabethan theatres, with the scene at the center and the public around it: we imagined that anyone could step on the stage and, in an instant, shift from spectator to actor, speaker, or performer. We also looked at the playgrounds and gardens of Isamu Noguchi, the Teatro del Mondo by Aldo Rossi, the Mughal astronomical observatories, as well as the surreal landscapes of quarries in Iran and Italy.

What are the most important features of your designs?
We liked the idea of celebrating these amazing stones as a space for conversations, it made sense that such a noble material would be dedicated to talks, which are made of thoughts and aspirations for the future. From there, we wanted these conversations to be open to different formats, and to develop in a place where they would be framed, and given value.

What materials did you use?
We visited SolidNature and selected different stone plates, which all looked like geological paintings, and we intuitively selected materials based on soft and bright hues, all Onyx of different shades and colors.

Why did you choose these materials?
We chose a softer color for the bench, which goes from yellow to white, as it collects the different elements, like a bay; pink for the tribune, as a contrast from the garden hedge; light blue for the pigeon towers, as palaces made of clouds, and green Onyx for the steps, like moss emerging from a brick floor.

What was your design process?
After testing different design layouts, we felt that the tribune as a courtyard responded to the context and allowed us to explore both different possibilities for conversations, different stones, and different cladding techniques.

Have you worked with natural stone before?
We have a certain obsession with minerals, the name of our studio is after the obsidian stone, and we often combine minerals in our projects, petrified in artificial rocks or as loose materials to play with. We have been working for several years with variations on terrazzo, experimenting with different grains of stones and other materials in cement mixtures. We are now very excited to work with natural stones, it is a different process, where no plate is the same, and makes us wish to design around the shapes of these geological drawings.

What is your favorite thing about working with natural stone?
It combines some properties of wood, where one chooses slabs in relation to the figures; no design can compete with the drawings made by geological processes over millions of years, and we wanted to celebrate the almost intimidating beauty of the different panels using simple and geometrical shapes which belong to people of all cultures.

What colour palette is dominant within the project and why?
We often work with a soft color palette which comes from the pigmentation of aggregates, where bright, vivid colors are hard to reach, therefore we were drawn to their natural counterpart, and chose soft tones of Onyx, combing bright, sometimes impalpable figures.

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