The brief the designers were given was simple but rigorous: the marble itself had to remain the dominant material, making up at least 70 percent of each piece, with interventions kept to the bare minimal thereby allowing the fragments’ original character to shine through. As we soon discovered. these restrictions did nothing to hinder the designers’ creativity. Working side by side with Najem Group’s artisans, they transformed offcuts, broken slabs, and long-abandoned decorative samples into unique furniture and sculptural pieces that masterfully balanced design experimentation with traditional craftsmanship. Staged inside Najem Group’s marble workshop from 18 to 25 September 2025, the exhibition not only tackled the question of waste whilst spotlighting Lebanon’s long-standing expertise in stonework, it also echoed the reality of a country that has learned, time and again, how to rebuild from what has been shattered.

Walking through the factory floor, what struck us first was how different designers had approached the same challenge. Some embraced the fragment as an architectural relic, others treated it as a sculptural element, while a few turned it into a playful starting point. From those that leaned toward architectural references, one of the most striking pieces came from Agglomerati and Pierre Castignola, who presented “Spolia”, a set of benches and shelves assembled from fragments of fireplace mantels found in Najem Group’s archives. Rather than hiding the seams, they made them visible, turning joints into part of the design. The result: furniture that felt simultaneously historic and contemporary, carrying the weight of its origins while clearly serving a new purpose.

Others pursued more deliberate compositions. Lebanese architect Roula Salamoun’s “Astérite” featured a polygonal table top supported by seven marble columns, carefully positioned to recall constellations. Its geometric clarity gave the piece a sense of order, while the fragments’ irregular surfaces reminded us of its improvised origins. Lebanese artist Tarek Moukadem designed a cast-concrete coffee table which he decorated by incorporating leftover mosaic scraps. By contrast, Georges Mohasseb, founder of Studio Manda, worked with almost no intervention at all with his “Menhir” series which used stone fragments as they were found, then pairing them with a single brass support or filling their natural slits with resin to create light sources.

Samer Bou Rjeily also played with rawness but added a crafted touch: his monolithic table was hand-chiselled along its edges into a pattern reminiscent of woven fabric. a simple move that gave the heavy stone an unexpected softness. Spockdesign took things in a lighter direction with swivel chairs that combined marble bases with wood and metal seats, turning stone into something mobile and approachable.