Translucent stone walls by Lithos Design – hows and whys

During the last few weeks, after presenting our new translucent stone walls at the ‘Salone del Mobile’ in Milan, we’ve been receiving so many information requests about this collection, ‘Pietre Luminose’.
Many of those who are contacting usare asking about how the product was conceived and consequently developed.

And it’s always like this, for a precise reason: besides the looks of a new product
– which an exhibition or a catalogue can show well enough -,
behind every collection, even behind every single model by Lithos Design
there’s a tale to tell.

Indeed, ‘Pietre Luminose’ were created because of our wish and need
to develop the theme of stone materials translucency.
My wish though is not to deal specifically with this topic now,
as we have recently told this beautiful tale in a previous article of ours,
trying to convey how translucent stone is able to show the history of the planet.

We had a second, but not less important goal,
that’s to say, to provide a whole product. A turnkey one.
Better said, to provide not only stone
but rather a full package where light source and material may become essential one to the other,
because in this project a separate Life is inconceivable either for Light, or for Stone.

That’s why we decided to develop for the ‘Pietre Luminose’ modules a specific light box, an applique designed and studied expressly to be combined with the stone tiles processed in Lithos Design style.
The tech specs of this back support were carefully pondered in order not only to make installation easy, but also (and above all) to provide the most suitable and performing kind of backlight.

Let’s present briefly its key features to all professionals who may want to know more…

First of all, we chose the light source to be dimmable,
so that the aesthetic effect could be varied at pleasure depending on the light intensity,
thus allowing the wall to show with higher or lower definition the intrinsic nature of marble,
or else to let the complex, 3-dimensional surface design to play a more or less important role.

Second, we chose a fluorescent light source, because basically what we were interested in achieving
was the combination of good performance and easy maintenance. In other words,
we wanted a long-lasting and energy-saving light source
that may grant uniform backlighting and may be easily found on the marketplace.

Installation was made as easy as possible,
it can be done with just 4 screws on any supporting material: concrete, wood, plasterboard…
No specific technical skills are required,
there’s no need to pay the services of a professional tile layer:
any carpenter, or electrician, actually any professional skilled in any kind of wall installations
can lay a “Le Pietre Luminose” backlit stone wall…
And certainly any electrician can work out how to settle the electric connections
and finally install the switch the will let the “magic” happen.

This also means that possible maintenance operations can be very easily made
by removing only the stone tiles, and only the ones laying in the same vertical row as the module that needs upkeep.

Lithos Design history started with the idea of applying industrial design basic principles
to natural stone and marble
in a way that was unprecedented until that moment.
It is continuing along this path combining its know-how on stone materials
with skills belonging to different worlds and technological fields,
a process that already started last year with the collection Drappi di Pietra.
Letting stone design be known and appreciated
by designers and architects, letting it have a role in their works,
means to us, every day more, proposing products that are complex in their concept and development,
but ready to use: give it to us to solve the problems upstream,
let designers be free to use a Lithos Design cladding
with creativity and flexibility, adapting it to the specific “magic” of any single setting.