Lithos Design donates Stone Gate to the city of its roots

Much more than an urban renovation project, right in the heart of the traditional industrial district dedicated to marble processing based in the Chiampo Valley. From today, the main square of its homonymous city will be the final destination of Stone Gate, the high-tech stone design work by Raffaello Galiotto and Lithos Design that caused quite a buzz in the last years, also by appearing in Verona right in front of the celebrated Arena.

Like “a gate that will project the territory of Chiampo in the future”, as the young mayor Matteo Macilotti stated in his playful Facebook previews, Stone Gate takes the place that so far has been occupied by a column symbolizing the importance of the marble sector in the territory. The 10,8-meter-high pillar is a further specimen of a series of 58 Corinthian columns, created in 1979 by the local master artisans and by artist Danilo Farinon for the Universal House of justice in Haifa – Israel. In honour of this important international acknowledgement – that would become just one of the first and would lead to the present, firm reputation of the area -, the authors pushed to have the column erected in the middle of the main city square, to pay homage to the place that gave them not only birth, but also their skills. At the time, though, they only obtained to have it temporarily laid in a side area, waiting for the square renovation. The works would start only 36 years later, and in early 2016 the column could be moved in the desired position at last, to dominate the square view with its impressive height.

The town council wished as well to partner this historical symbol with a new, cutting-edge work, to testify that, thanks to this tradition of excellence, some of the most innovative companies in the international field of marble processing are rising right in this territory, and that the acknowledgements of the past are becoming the pride of the present and a milestone for the future. This is also Lithos Design’s vision and mission, so the owners had and immediate, proactive response; they are now proud, then, to see Stone Gate lay on one side of the square, becoming an icon of the novel creativity and the avant-guarde technological development of the area.

From the column, one can observe the perspective beyond the “gate”; from the gate, what stands out more when looking through its inner circle is the traditional column. An eternal dialogue carved in stone, that will tell today’s and tomorrow’s citizens how the past and the future are inevitably interconnected in the history of any place.

Stone Gate
Concept & Design: Raffaello Galiotto
Engineering and works supervision: Alessandro Serafini

Among the pictures: “Chiampo capitello colonna-lq”, original uploader on Italian Wikipedia Feroce maria bumerlo, transferred from it.wikipedia to Commons. [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons