A lot of architecture think-tank stuff loses me, but this one I can both follow and get behind. Amor Immeuble is a Paris-based quartet of architects interested in material research and experimentation. They recently encountered a series of beautifully-crafted marble pieces that were once prized and are now considered waste. With their “Deposees” series, the group considers how best to preserve these pieces and integrate them into modern life.
Essentially, the group notes that as fireplaces are no longer needed for heat, they’re often removed during renovations to free up floor space. However, they often have ornate marble mantles that were the must-have interior design feature of the 19th century.
They were sold by catalog, as the group explains:
“Nineteenth-century marble-makers flooded France with these kit dressings by the wagonload, standardizing catalogs with a limited series of model-types, utilitarian syntheses of historical styles.”
“The ambivalent status of these standardized ornaments—architectural archetype or decorative product, indispensable figure in the domestic landscape or cumbersome antique—is inevitably debated during interior renovation projects.”
“What position should we, as architects, adopt in such situations? What is the value of this ornamented interface, ultimately stripped of all function when the ducts are condemned? What place should be given to the many pieces that have been deposited? Among these sheet-rock facings, consoles and modillions stand out, more elaborate and massive in their function as projecting supports.”
“The generic nature of the fragments collected enables us to turn them into three-dimensional assemblies that temporarily occupy the domestic space of the gallery: the rock, reduced to an ornamental motif, is used here for its structural capacity, and the contoured form becomes a framework component, abstracted from its original orientation and symbolism.”
At present there’s no practical application for the salvaged mantle fragments, but the constructions pictured here were exhibited at the DNL Gallery in Paris.
