Gemeg, always looking for the perfect block
by Gianni Sani

GEMEG, one of the leading companies in quarrying and trading of high quality marble blocks in Carrara, over the last few years has increased its processing activities by selecting from its own quarry the best materials to be destined to big projects throughout the world.
Through its qualified staff, GEMEG, welcomes visitors in two showrooms, where they can find a wide range of materials coming from the main extractive areas of the Carrara basin.
Thanks to a high quality extraction process, GEMEG is able to manage the quarry, the cutting and the warehouse according to the project requirements.
Architects and individuals from all over the world have experienced GEMEG's world, appreciating its reliability, its professionalism and its passion for a such unique and natural material.

It is not the first time Diamante deals with this company: GEMEG, an important reality in the marble industry - virtually present all over the world - extracts, selects, processes, and sales the best materials offered by the Apuan Alps, and has been following a meticulous programming of the extracting process since several years by now. From the quarry to the store, every centimeter of marble is checked, followed and monitored by professionals and state-of-the-art computer technologies. This is probably one of the few cases in the whole world, where we can truly use the world "production" of marble.

Further than this new corporate philosophy, GEMEG has also stood out for the language used to promote the company and its product. Its blitz to Milan's 'Fuorisalone', its participation to the Natural Stone Vision, its presence at Marmotec 2010 (related on Diamante's n° 62) with a very peculiar stand, the production of the movie 'Il capo' - presented in the section 'Orizzonti' of the Venice Film Festival - and at Marmomacc next September, demonstrate the engagement of this company - old in age, but not in spirit - always looking to restore the tarnished relationship between "marble and people".

What Philippe Daverio said during Carrara Marble Week's opening conference - organized together with important figures of the architectural world - is true: "Carrara is synonym of marble, because people have decided so". But, what is also true is that, since World War II, "people" have neglected marble and the oblivion has touched also Carrara. Since the 1950s, in fact, the production, or better, the extraction and the subsequent transformation of the raw material has focused overwhelmingly on quantity, the companies have stopped investing in research, the designers have been enchanted by the "modern" industrial materials, and the architectural world has turned its back on what has always been the noblest material in the building world.

Everybody remember the thousands of buildings realized during the 1960s economic boom, the apartment blocks (even the ones with a few floors) or the small and elegant buildings, featuring cool and lazy hallways covered in statuary and veined openmatch marble, staircases withm two-centimeter Calacatta or Travertine steps and iron or plastic handrail, and even lift cabins floored with important Verona red marbles. Marble has lost the leading role it had been having in the big show of architecture. The latest appearances on the international stages had been the best buildings of the rationalistic architecture: Terragni's 'Casa del fascio' (old headquarters of the Italian Fascists Party, t.n.), with its elegant covering in Botticino marble, the numerous train stations, the 'Palazzo della Civiltà' in Rome's EUR district, and the many public buildings scattered all over Italy.

The reasons for this loss of importance should be searched in the change of the perception of "beauty", and in the cultural flattening which, by now, has reached preoccupying levels. Even in a "small" but highly symbolic reality like Carrara, the gap between the marble and the people had become huge. But what has happened in the latest weeks can change this trend. Ideas cannot spread without the work of good writers, who can help divulging them: idea, writer, society. Marble, architect, society. This is the message launched by GEMEG: to bring again the designers and their product amongst people, to bring the material in the streets and show its potential, to remind people what a wonderful stone marble is. What strikes more in GEMEG's events is participation: a whirl of people, a merry-goround of families, a symbolic embrace amongst street artists, quarriers, architects, common people, who now share a common language, after a long time.

And language, precisely, is the underlying theme of this company's philosophy: the language of the material, of architecture, of design, of art, and of communication. The matter, the marble, the block, such a pure element, always surprising for its beauty.

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