marble architecture power

Nowadays we associate marble with the white marble of Greek antiquity, the Italian Renaissance or classicism. We think of the buildings on the Acropolis in Athens or of Milan’s Cathedral. But the idea of marble in antiquity was very different. At the time, the term was used to describe all polishable stones, including varieties as geologically disparate as alabaster, granite or porphyry, which have a broad and in some cases vibrant colour palette. In part, this view was still commonly held into the nineteenth century.The history of marble as a material is therefore also a story of variously coloured stones. 1

Their difficult extraction, costly transportation and limited availability made these coloured marbles luxury products that were always also a sign of special status and claims to power.

In the nineteenth century, collecting, identifying and categorising antique decorative stones became a veritable pastime among the upper classes in Rome. People were fascinated by the outstanding cultural significance of the material. One of these historical collections of ancient Roman coloured marbles, the Feliciani Collection, is today housed in the store of the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich. It is unique in terms of its size, composition and historical significance. 2

In classical Greece (approximately fifth century BC), the use of white marble was reserved for public stately buildings and temples. The material symbolised the wealth and prosperity of the community. It was not until the luxurious palaces and mausoleums of the late classical period (fourth century BC) and the Hellenistic period in particular (from the third century BC) that coloured marble also started to be used for entire interiors. In combination with other precious materials such as gold, silver and ivory, the multi-coloured stones created complex spatial experiences and of course also emphasised the special social status of the master of the house.

By contrast, the use of marble – both white and coloured – in ancient Rome was a relatively late phenomenon, but one that proved to be all the more long-lasting, whereby Roman marble aesthetics influenced the history of architecture across the entire western world.

With the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Empire around the middle of the first century BC and the ensuing access to new quarries, but also thanks to the exploitation of white marble from Carrara (the antique Luni) in Northern Italy, which is still quarried today, this material was no longer only used for public buildings in Rome either.

The blaze of colour from coloured marbles was now a sought-after status symbol in private residences and luxury villas belonging to the Roman upper classes. Anyone with aspirations had coloured marble columns in his home as well as floors and walls covered with shining, polished coloured marble panels identical to those in the interior of a temple.

Over time, the use of coloured marble became more and more sophisticated, as did the way that artists interpreted its materiality and colour. The era saw experimentation with all kinds of new techniques, such as marble applications or decorative inlay work – essentially a kind of “painting in stone”. 3

For the architects and master builders of the nineteenth century, the decorative stones uncovered during excavations in Rome, based on which collections and corresponding catalogues were created, were an important source of inspiration. The different stones belonged to the canon of ancient architecture and were used or imitated in contemporary buildings of the time.

Famous, well-staged interior décor made of coloured and partially artificial marble (stucco marble) can be found for example in the Walhalla in Donaustauf and in the New Hermitage in St. Petersburg both by Leo von Klenze, in the Neues Museum in Berlin by Friedrich August Stüler and in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna by Gottfried Semper.

Some of the most important ancient varieties of marble remained available and were quarried sporadically even after the Fall of the Roman Empire. By comparison, others, such as Cipollino verde (called “Marmor carystium” by the Romans) from near Karystos on the Greek island of Euboea or the purple-red so-called “imperial porphyry” from Mons Porphyrites in Egypt were well known, but their precise quarrying locations had been forgotten. As part of the reawakened interest in ancient coloured marbles, towards the end of the nineteenth century the English stone merchant William Brindley went in search of the lost ancient Roman quarries in Greece, Turkey and North Africa. He negotiated and acquired a number of concessions for quarrying stone, including for the above-mentioned Cipollino from Euboea. 5

In 1873, Italy exhibited the Feliciani Collection, which was still in Rome at the time, at the World's Fair in Vienna. The reaction of the press was euphoric, and Italy was vaunted as having assumed “the first rank amongst nations in the showcasing of its stone treasures”. 6

A catalogue compiled by Emile de Meester de Ravestein in 1872 for his personal collection of ancient coloured marbles gives an excellent insight into the ambitions and intentions underlying the collections of the time. The author wrote that his collection “should animate an emulation of the Ancients”, but not through replication or mere reuse, rather in the form of inspiration. 7 In other words, the ancient stones were to encourage others to discover the treasures in their own countries and to open up new avenues for art and for modern industry. 8 Consequently, the study of these stones was not intended to result in the adoption of ancient building materials but rather to train and hone a sense for modern building materials.

Five years after Italy won fame at the Vienna World’s Fair for presenting the Feliciani Collection, Switzerland displayed its own building stone deposits at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1878 and won “four major prizes and six gold medals”. 9 The first major national exhibition in Zurich in 1883 also featured the entire “wealth of the country's magnificent building materials”. 10 Alongside stone specimens, including both decorative stones and solid building stones, the exhibition presented different types of uses and finishing techniques.

The stone industry in Switzerland flourished generally in the second half of the nineteenth century. Significant stone deposits were identified, stone properties systematically tested for the first time and many new quarries opened. 11 This period marked the heyday for Arzo marble from Ticino, which had already been quarried on a large scale since the sixteenth century. Moreover, a green-greyish banded marble from Saillon in Wallis, which showed great similarity to the ancient Roman Cipollino and was discovered around 1873, was soon successfully marketed as Grand Cipolin antique (Grand Antique de Saillon) far beyond Switzerland’s borders. 12

The parliament building of the Federal Palace (Bundeshaus) in Bern, designed by Semper student Hans Wilhelm Auer between 1894 and 1902, is a built manifestation of the country’s national stone treasures. Regarding the choice of materials, Auer commented prior to the commencement of the building, “in the interior, the most conventional hard stones and marbles from all over Switzerland have to be called upon, in full and without exception.” 13 A total of 30 native stones were used in the construction of the parliament building. Even though these only represent a fraction of the varieties of stone extracted at the time from around 700 active quarries, geographically they represent almost the entire country. 14

Some of Zurich’s buildings from the 'Historismus' and 'Gründerzeit' eras also boast examples of Swiss decorative stone, such as Arzo marble and Saillon marble (Grand Cipolin Antique).

In the twentieth century, the significance of coloured marble changed once again. Cement, steel and glass came to play an increasingly important role as building materials, and the aesthetics of architecture underwent a major transformation. Natural stone and with it the craft of stone-working was becoming less and less popular. Nevertheless, marble never completely disappeared as a surface material, playing a pivotal role for example in the architecture of Italian Razionalismo alongside travertine. 19

Two of the main protagonists of the International Style, Adolf Loos and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, also used decorative stones familiar from the antique in some of their best-known buildings, emphasising its pure materiality by using the stone for large surfaces at prominent locations.

Adolf Loos chose the aforementioned Cipollino marble for the facade of the ground floor and mezzanine level of the Loos House in Vienna, a material that had in recent years become available again for the first time since antiquity. In a written defence published in the 'Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt' on 30 September 1910, the architect, who travelled to Euboea himself to select the marble from the quarry, wrote: “Nobody knows yet what this effect will be. Never before has Cipollino marble been used in such volumes. After the Fall of Rome, the quarries were forgotten … and now the House at Michaelerplatz is to be the first large building designed in this most beautiful and magnificent of all marble varieties.” 20

Like Loos, Mies van der Rohe was the son of a stonemason and grew up learning how to use natural stone. In his Barcelona Pavilion, created in 1929 as the German Reich's contribution to the International Exhibition in the Spanish city and regarded as a manifesto of modernist architecture, Mies van der Rohe placed a wall made from North African golden onyx as a free-standing object in the centre of the space. 21 The other walls made from Vert antique and green Tinos marble from the Greek island of the same name are also arranged as objects. 22

While the aesthetic approach to coloured marble in modernist architecture was different from that of prior epochs, the inherent connotations of a sophisticated and precious stone remained, resulting in an air of exclusivity that the material still possesses today.

Translucence, one of the properties of marble already deployed in ancient Rome, is the theme of Gordon Bunshaft’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library clad in white Vermont marble and St. Pius Church by Franz Füeg, who used thin-cut Pentelic marble from Greece for the facade.

Since antiquity, coloured marble has been used as a building material in constantly changing aesthetic and historical contexts. It is still available today. The quantities of stone quarried nowadays in Switzerland are far less than in the nineteenth century, with material for architectural purposes currently extracted from only 75 quarries. For example, the extraction of Arzo marble or Cipolin antique from Saillon ceased completely for lack of profitability, due among other things to the changing fashions in stone. 23

Marble in the narrower – and petrographically correct – sense is now only quarried at just one location in Switzerland: light toned Cristallina marble from Peccia in Ticino’s Maggia Valley. By contrast, coloured marbles as defined by the ancient meaning, i.e. coloured, polishable hard stones, are still quarried, including for example Rouge de Collonges, Vert de Salvan, Andeer and Valser Quartzite.

All of the decorative stones mentioned here are included in the Material Collection of ETH Zurich on the Hönggerberg Campus, together with other building materials such as timber, ceramics, glass, metal, adobe, lime, plaster, cement or plastics. By comparing historical building materials with contemporary materials and by providing a database in cooperation with the network Material-Archiv, the aim of the collection is to raise awareness of the significance and context of building materials and encourage a substantive approach to these materials, similar to the intention of the grand decorative stone collections of the nineteenth century.