Stones Venue Public Shelter / Associates Architecture

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Stones Venue has been conceived as a public gathering space where people can find shade and shelter, but also as a place of memory—honoring the territory and all those who, over the centuries, have worked to shape and define it.The process leading to the project's realization lasted almost five years and involved eleven companies, each of which donated a discarded stone block from its own production, totaling nine different types of stone: three from Bergamo (Arabescato Orobico, Ceppo di Gré, and Nuvolato) and six from Brescia (Breccia Aurora, Breccia Damascata, Breccia Oniciata, Fiorito Chiaro, Marmo Classico di Botticino, and Porfido).Text description provided by the architects.Stones Venue is a public shelter built, in Brescia, within a former sand mining site, now transformed into a green area for the city: Parco delle Cave. The project stems from the desire of the Consorzio Produttori Marmo Botticino Classico, in agreement with the Municipality of Brescia, to build a public project in an area, symbolic of quarrying activity—honoring the main stone varieties that define the territorial and geological identity of the cities of Bergamo and Brescia.The roof structure consists of nine monolithic pillars made from different stone varieties, along with one additional pillar in Marmo di Botticino Classico with a Ceppo di Gré graft—a sculpture by artist Francesco Paterlini, symbolizing the union of the two cities within a shared territory. The pillars, anchored to the ground with steel plates, support a steel roof that serves as both a material and architectural memory of the industrial structures that once defined this former mining site.