A renowned architect and scholar, Paolo Camaiora guides us on a journey into the indissoluble bond between humankind and stone. And does so through his critical vision, which reveals the importance of stone culture, the challenges tied to its conservation, his concern about the future of Carrara and clear criticism of imitation stone.

Born in Carrara, for more than twenty years Paolo Camaiora has been a freelance professional and involved in historic research into architecture, stone materials and the applied arts of the 1930s, subjects he has dealt with in books and articles. He has worked with Italian and foreign architecture firms and as a consultant for Apuan stone companies, specializing in the technologies for working, installing and recouping natural stone. He organizes seminars on these subjects for professional orders and schools. He is official technical consultant for the Massa tribunal and prosecutorial office and fiduciary consultant for the Italian Navy at La Spezia. He is currently the secretary of the Order of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects and Conservators of the province of Massa Carrara and in charge of its education and culture department.

 

If I say stone, what’s the first thing you think of?

It’s such an ancient, evocative word… it’s the identity card of the Earth but also of humankind, forever an element of civilization and culture: from the flint engraved with the Ten Commandments to the basis of the most important buildings. For more than two thousand years stone has been the material fundamental to the concept of construction, marking the relationship between humans, nature and eternity. There are no urban, architectural, sculptural works or symbolic representations that do not include its use. For centuries it has marked the cultural level of cities, has represented the companies that extract it from mineral basins and transform it, as well as the great sculptors that through the centuries have used it to depict saints and notables.

 

With what types of natural stone do you work most often and why?

Having always lived and worked in the Apuan-Versilian district, marbles, and to a lesser extent travertines and granites.

What project are you most proud of?

Modernizing the Marble Samples Room at the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts. Inaugurated in 1934, it is housed in Palazzo del Principe and is the oldest collection of marble samples in Italy, with 210 slabs of Italian marbles, some very rare and of great value. Among other things, the project won the national restoration and preventive conservation prize from the Italian Cultural Heritage Ministry.

 

What aspects today do you believe are most interesting and winning in using natural stone 360°?

Stone is first of all a construction material able to valorize any type of work. The marvel of marble is realizing that each piece is different from any other, forged exclusively by the forces of nature and by time: this has always been and will always be its added value, its unique, characterizing and inimitable feature. It comes from the depths of time and is eternal, when it’s worn you polish it and it returns to how it was before, unlike other types of material that merely wink at this…