The expressive potential of Concrete with Studio Ossidiana
A hands on workshop on the expressive potential of concrete, involving formwork, pouring and polishing, creating a Petrified Tapestry of concrete tiles. 1, 2, 9 and 16 November 2024
Over the course of four days, participants worked with Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini of Studio Ossidiana to collaboratively design and build a modular platform - a shared space for eating, playing, sitting, and displaying objects. The project explored the rituals associated with these actions, focusing on their spatial, temporal, and material aspects.
The workshop began by collecting materials from the contemporary landscape along the river Maas. This diverse environment—a system shaped by water, soil, landfills, dunes, and polders—has evolved over time through horticultural and industrial processes. Participants collected shells from Maasvlakte, metal scraps from the M4H area, and bricks, glass, and stones from construction sites and landfills of demolished buildings.
The developed platform is composed of modular tiles, each becoming a world on its own, abstracting a field, canals, the dunes, or chimneys of the factories - all fragments of a petrified tapestry. The workshop focused on casting and the making of terrazzo, a composite material made from granulates bound with lime or cement. Terrazzo, which dates back to ancient Roman times, was traditionally created from polished fragments of leftover stones and terracotta. In this workshop, we reinterpreted the terrazzo tradition by experimenting with unconventional materials, formwork, and finishes. The materials scavenged from the city - such as clay, seashells, mineral waste, fragments of bricks or stones, marble, charcoal, and soil - became either formwork or aggregates in the process. They became incorporated in the Tarrazzo and turned into new "artificial rocks”, telling stories of the landscape they belong to, suggesting a new contemporary geology.
The workshop took place across two locations: the Independent School for the City in Rotterdam and the Tomaello terrazzo factory in Vlaardingen. At Tomaello, participants collaborated with terrazzo artisans to cast and finish the pieces.
The platform will be installed in the courtyard of the Independent School for the City in Spring 2025
About Studio Ossidiana
Studio Ossidiana is an award-winning practice working at the crossroads of architecture, design, and landscape, led by Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini. Balancing research and fabrication, the practice explores innovative approaches through buildings, materials, objects, and installations. It is their ambition to design usable and generous spaces, materials, and concepts, to both participate in a global architectural debate, as well as ground the thinking in the built environment, through permanent or temporary projects. In 2018, Studio Ossidiana was awarded the Dutch Prix de Rome, the most prestigious prize for architects under the age of 35. The studio’s work has been exhibited in international exhibitions, among others, at Venice Architecture Biennale, Istanbul Design Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennale, Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, and Shenzhen Architecture Biennale.