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The maestro shines again
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A new hotel in an old tram depot
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tony robins’ playhouse
A stunning oceanside retreat p. 86
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3 radical designers rethink
the kitchen P. 42
2014-09-03 4:33 PM
stone age
ahead
P74-77_Lamb+Dzek_OCT14_F.indd 74
2014-08-29 4:49 PM
Dzek of London
has launched a new
type of architectural
surfacing, with the
help of British
designer Max Lamb
By Giovanna Dunmall
Called Marmoreal, the new material debuted
during iSaloni in Milan, with a display that
covered an entire room at Project B gallery.
oct 2014 75
P74-77_Lamb+Dzek_OCT14_F.indd 75
2014-09-03 3:37 PM
The company envisions
the new architectural
surfacing as having
multiple applications,
including furniture.
← Dzekciorius and Lamb
worked closely with
chemists at a stone factory
outside Verona, Italy, to
develop Marmoreal’s
composition of 95 per
cent marble and 5 per
cent polyester resin.
↓ The granules that make
up the material include
four types of stone,
in shades of red, green,
yellow and white.
With thousands of product launches and endless cathedral-sized displays
of high-end furnishings on view, it’s hard for a fledgling company to stand
out amid the din of Milan Design Week. Yet at Project B gallery last spring,
a small but impressively realized installation commanded attention for
its vision and ambition. Marmoreal, a new multi-chromatic engineered
marble, was presented in an immersive display that saw the walls and floor
of one room covered in the composite, with matching furniture camouflaged
throughout. Those who saw the display raved about the originality of the
idea, the beauty of the material and, above all, the possibilities it offered.
The development process, two years in the making, arose from a collaboration between London designer Max Lamb, and Dzek, an architectural
surface company also based in London and founded by Brent Dzekciorius.
Unlike terrazzo, which uses granules and chips of marble mixed to form an
even pattern, Marmoreal features particles of various sizes – some delicate
and fleck-like, others as big as a baby’s palm – which appear to float in an
iridescent soup of milk. The results are very graphic.
Lamb is well known for integrating the construction of his products
as a readable aspect of their final form, and Marmoreal also displays that
trait. In recent years, he has shaped stools from single sheets of metal (for
Discipline); and for the British ceramics company 1882 Ltd he carved milk
jugs, plates and bowls out of plaster blocks using stonemasonry tools. Later
cast in fine bone china, the crockery looks almost comic, like something
Fred Flintstone might use, its chunky forms and uneven edges revealing
every gouge of the chisel.
To develop Marmoreal (which comes from a single factory near Verona,
azuremagazine.com
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2014-08-29 4:49 PM
↑The composite is now
available in 1.2-by-three-metre
slabs and a range of tile sizes.
↗ Brent Dzekciorius started
Dzek to develop on­going
collaborations with craft-­
oriented designers.
→ Max Lamb, who has worked
with Dzekciorius before,
is well known for designing
material-based products.
For Marmoreal, he sought
to create an aggregate that
would reveal rather than
hide the stone’s distinctive
characteristics.
Italy), Lamb and Dzekciorius experimented with different combinations
of stones, and particle sizes that would play up the stone’s attributes rather
than disguise it with uniformity. They settled on four types bound into
an aggregate with polyester resin. The final roll call includes Rosso Verona,
Giallo Mori, Verde Alpi, and Bianco Verona, the last one chosen over
Carrara after the pair found that the more widely used marble’s translucency and porousness caused halos around the resin.
Dzekciorius describes his collaborator as a relentless perfectionist: “Max
has a thorough understanding of what he is working in, and he was rigorous
in determining what the quarry was best at and where he could push them.”
Of Dzekciorius, Lamb says he provided an ideal platform from which
to bring the concept to production, adding, “Not many companies would
go near something like this, given the research involved.” In fact, the initial
10-tonne block produced as a prototype failed entirely, as the composite
cracked when the cutters tried to turn the blocks into slabs.
Dzekciorius is charmingly humble, yet the native New Yorker has demonstrated a talent for initiating effective collaborations, a skill he honed
over years in the city’s design-art world, at one point working with Murray
Moss, owner of the now-defunct Moss Gallery. In 2010, he moved to London
to head up retail operations for the inter­national auctioneer Phillips. While
there, he curated Nendo’s lauded Thin Black Lines exhibition, installed in
2010 at the Saatchi Gallery. A year later, he commissioned Faye Toogood to
conceptualize a furniture collection that explored the theme of iridescence.
“He gave me what I thought was an impossible challenge,” she recalls, “to
design and produce 10 pieces in four months, all at a standard I had never
worked to before.” He also urged her to push for pieces that were more than
just sculptural but also functional.
Dzekciorius left Phillips last year to focus exclusively on an idea he had
kept on the back burner for several years: a collection of furnishings and
products based on ongoing collaborations with designers. “I didn’t want to
simply manufacture rare things,” he says. “I wanted to do something between
full-scale industrial production and the gallery model, something that
could have more impact and be more accessible.”
The partners are keen to demonstrate Marmoreal’s wider applications.
“It can be a floor or a bench – it doesn’t have to be a complete world,” he
says. Launching the surfacing in Milan, at a fair primarily devoted to furniture, enabled potential clients to see the domestic possibilities. The stone
is now available in 1.2-by-three-metre slabs and a range of tile sizes. There
are also plans afoot to develop a different, perhaps darker, version, though
that presents complications. In its current form, Marmoreal consists of 95
per cent marble and five per cent bonding polyester, explains Dzekciorius:
“Various marbles work differently with the resin, so you can’t apply the
percentages broadly.”
So far, he has managed to finance the project, which is now breaking
even, with the bespoke pieces he commissions for private clients. “It has
been a big investment,” he admits nervously, though the next Dzek product
is already underway. “We are researching steel, earth and clay,” he says
without revealing the name of his new collaborator. Whoever it might be,
based on Marmoreal’s initial outing, the results should be spectacular.
dzekdzekdzek.com
oct 2014 77
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