When Marmi Rossi was founded 50 years ago, it was just a small craft business in a rented and very modest factory building, which was quite in a bad state. At that time, it was hardly thinkable that the company would turn out as it has today.
During the last fifty years, Marmi Rossi spa has grown to a large company with 41.000 square metres of factory premises, becoming a well-established player in the stone industry. Starting in 1966 with a small rented factory building, the company moved later to Volargne and then to Cavaion Veronese: our current headquarter hosts an office building and several production facilities that surround a large square with a vast collection of blocks. Since this is the true heart of our company, it was placed at the centre of our factory and it includes personally selected blocks from all over the world.
The substantial block deposit with a large range of different material is the focus of the company’s activity, these are only some of our most common types: Nero Zimbabwe, Nero Africa, Bengal Black, Kashmire White… The blocks are ready to be cut and the surface of each slab, that we daily offer to our customers, has only to be finished individually.
During their first visit, a lot of our customers are surprised to see the large selection of granite blocks on our square. Each time we see their surprise, we can’t hide a smile, because the view of those blocks is very common to us.
Let’s now come to the origin of our new offices.
For a very long time we have known that our office is too old-fashioned to fulfil our modern needs.
Some years ago, a first project was developed and it was interesting, pleasant and scenic, but it only showed a „standard“ office building.
Then, one day, we looked out of the window, our gaze caught the hundreds of blocks, each block piled on top of another and all blocks dominated by the overhead crane. That was the exact time when our long-term architect Silvia Bettini came up with a brilliant idea for our new offices.
Initially, she didn’t breathe a word about it. As she is really addicted to drawing, she went immediately home to draw some sketches and only several days later, she showed us her simple but brilliant idea.
The new offices of Marmi Rossi would reflect, true to scale, a group of blocks on our company square and the logo of Marmi Rossi would be arranged above the offices just as it can be clearly read on the overhead crane!
A simple but brilliant idea, that reflects the company’s identity as well as our strive for renovation.
This year, the company Marmi Rossi celebrates its 50th anniversary and, on this occasion, we decided to renew us, therefore our old office building was demolished at the beginning of this year and our logo was restyled. Nothing too fancy, only further development of the company’s logo you‘ve already known for many years (watch here the modification of our logo); all these changes have affected the whole image of our company, as you can note on our web site.
But let’s return to our project: It’s all about twelve stone blocks, each piled on top of another, which resembles the same disposition found on our factory square. Tall frontage windows separate each block building from another, just the same as the empty space between the several block files.
Each building block has a different dimension, as for the length, the width and the height; they also have different rectangular forms, that correspond to the irregularities of real stone blocks.
Each building facade is made of a different granite, which serves as thermal insulation, but it also reminds us of a real granite block. Twelve blocks and twelve different types of granite are elegantly combined in this building cladding.
The central building block has a large and inviting entrance stairway, made of Volga Blue and it gives the visitor the impression to walk inside a block.
All the surfaces of the granite facades are satined to highlight the natural irregularity of granite and contemporarily, the surface is very smooth to touch. In the interior of the offices you’ll mostly find material with polished and honed surfaces to enhance colour and surface texture of each material.
Behind the building blocks, on the wall of the highest building for „tools and services“, the logo of Marmi Rossi is displayed to recall the overhead crane, a central element in our block deposit.
The exterior of the new offices is made of these types of granite: Black Pearl, Cafè Imperial, Brown Antique, Azul California, Virginia Black, Labrador Antique, Olive Green, Labrador Blue Pearl Tfv, Verde Marina, Imperial Brown, Azul Noche, Volga Blue.
The new office building, the 50th anniversary, the new logo and granite: all of them are essential and vital for the existence of our company. However, our priority is still: delivering material of the best quality together with a permanent effort to meet the needs of our customers.
UPDATE MAY 2017
Actually, we consider the new office a beautiful example of how various material with different surface finishing can be employed and the architectonic combination with large window fronts, too, is also highly effective. The completed building has practically exceeded our expectations, even a professional magazine has published an article about it: read the article about Marmi Rossi’s new offices on Casabella..
Discover the interior design of the new office: "The Mondrian Wall of Marmi Rossi"
We thank Nicolò Gallucci for the images