“It is not the oldest of its kind, but it’s the most complete and the rarest,” said Hammam Saad, Associate Director at Syria’s General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in an interview with the Associated Press, adding: “We have no similar mosaic.”

The artwork in question, made of half-inch square stone tiles, is remarkably well-preserved, having been hidden underneath the 1,600-year-old Roman building that stood above it until recently. The property was bought by businessmen with the Nabu Museum in Lebanon and donated to the Syrian government for excavation.

“There are other buildings, and it’s clear that the mosaic extends far wider,” Sulaf Fawakherji, Syrian actress and board member at the Nabu Museum, told the AP. “Rastan historically is an important city, and it could possibly be a very important heritage city for tourism.”

Having unearthed roughly 1,300 square feet so far, the grand floor covering depicts scenes from the Trojan War, featuring soldiers with swords and shields and the names of many Greek leaders who fought in the 1200 B.C. conflict. The Roman water god Neptune is also highlighted in one panel along with 40 of his mistresses. Another segment shows the Greek demi-god Hercules battling the queen of the Amazons and her ancient warriors in one of his 12 labors.

“What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale,” says Saad. “We can’t identify the type of the building, whether it’s a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet.” Syrian officials heralded the discovery of this mosaic as the most important archeological find since the civil war started 11 years ago.

Rastan was one of the first Syrian cities to rise up in rebellion against the totalitarian government of Bashar al-Assad, experiencing a tumultuous seven years until the Syrian government regained control in 2018. The city has had a rich historical past as an important locale during Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman rule.

Many of the country’s national treasures were vandalized or destroyed during the civil war. All six of Syria’s UNESCO sites have been damaged in some way amidst the fighting. The worst artifact offense was in 2015, when the Islamic State took over the ancient city of Palmrya and destroyed the first century A.D. Temple of Bel with explosives, as well as the third-century Roman Arch of Triumph and the second century B.C. Temple of Baalshamin. Since the Syrian government has reclaimed the city, it has been working on plans to restore all three sites.

Even this latest mosaic was under threat of removal from rebel armies in the recent past.

“Unfortunately, there were armed groups that tried to sell the mosaic at one point in 2017 and listed it on social media platforms,” Saad explains. Luckily, it’s once again protected by the government — even if that government is tyrannical and should not be allowed to continue ruling.

The post 1,600-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Unearthed in Syrian Town first appeared on Dornob.

Co-designed and built with teachers and 44 students from Haroun Tazieff high school in Saint-Paul-lés-Dax, France, ProtoCAMPO is the third iteration of a building technique developed by Frédérique Barchelard and Flavien Menu, themselves former fellows of Villa Medici (2019-2020). The first was the Proto-Habitat, built during their stay in Rome, and the second was the SOLARproto, a 300-square-meter exhibition space built in Amsterdam. ProtoCAMPO takes those concepts and builds upon them, tailored to its unique environment and purpose in one of the city’s most beautifully preserved Renaissance palaces — not to mention home to The French Academy in Rome.

“ProtoCAMPO is both low-tech and high-tech,” explain the designers. “Low tech, as it is assembled by hand using traditional and basic carpentry and joinery assemblage techniques to build up the prefabricated timber pieces. High-tech, in the conception of the inflatable cupola that can be implemented in less than an hour to unfold a six-meter diameter dome weighing only 300 kilograms. protoCAMPO subtly plays with the rhythm of the Villa Medici’s garden framing views of the 200-year-old pine trees and the historic villa. The repetitive timber structure echoes the Renaissance grid structure of the garden being both classical and wild. The dialogue between the pavilion and the surrounding nature evolves over the day, playing with the sun’s path and the rhythm of the garden.”

The cupola of the pavilion shelters up to 350 occupants while remaining open to the sun and wind, and the wooden base is sturdy enough to withstand heavy traffic. In the first week of the festival, protoCAMPO welcomed 300 high school students as part of the Residence Pro educational program developed by Villa Medici with the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region. Now, it’s hosting events, concerts, dinners, shows, and some of the villa’s cultural events for the remainder of the year. Like WALD’s other “proto-architecture” projects, it’s prefabricated, locally sourced, and modular, so it can be quickly assembled and disassembled. No word yet on how it will be used next.

Located near Rome’s famous Spanish Steps, the Villa Medici was designed by Bartolomeo Ammanati and built by Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando de Medici in the 16th century as an estate and open-air museum celebrating the Medici family’s influence in Rome. Its grounds include Roman bas-reliefs and statues, botanical gardens, formal gardens, and palatial architecture. In 1803, it became home to The French Academy in Rome, which aims to welcome artists, creators, and art historians in residence, curate cultural and artistic programs, and conserve the palace’s architectural and landscape heritage.

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In 2013, Italian architect Dario del Bufalo, an expert on ancient stone and marble, was in New York to give a lecture and sign copies of his book Porphyry. Included in the book was a photo of a red and green mosaic that had once been part of the dance floor on one of emperor Caligula’s extravagant “party ships.”

“There was a lady with a young guy with a strange hat that came to the table,” Del Bufalo told CBS’ 60 Minutes. “And he told her, ‘What a beautiful book. Oh, Helen, look, that’s your mosaic.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, that’s my mosaic.’”

The architect chased down the young man, who led them to art dealer and gallery owner Helen Fioratti, who did in fact own the ancient tile work and had mounted it to a pedestal as a coffee table decades earlier. The artwork was subsequently confiscated by New York authorities and returned to the Italian government.

Emperor Caligula, one of the most despised Roman rulers, was known for his violence and over-the-top opulence. Among other things, he commissioned two giant pleasure barges (one was as long as an Airbus A380 plane) to sit on Lake Nemi. After his assassination in 41 A.D., the ships were sunk and remained at the bottom of the lake until the 1920s, when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had the lake emptied. Hundreds of artifacts were recovered over the following years and put in a museum, but as the Nazis retreated from Italy in 1944, both the ships and the museum were destroyed by fire.

Because the mosaic-turned-coffee table shows no signs of fire damage, authorities suspect it was either stolen from the museum before the blaze or taken for a private collection before it could ever make it to the museum.

“These items may be beautiful, storied, and immensely valuable to collectors, but willfully disregarding the provenance of an item is effectively offering tacit approval of a harmful practice that is, fundamentally, criminal,” New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. said in a statement speaking of the mosaic, as well as two other artifacts recovered and returned to Italy.

“It was an innocent purchase,” Fioratti told the New York Times in 2017. “It was our favorite thing and we had it for 45 years.”

She and her husband reportedly bought it from a Roman noble family in the 1960s, through a sale brokered by an Italian police official known for finding Nazi-looted art after World War II. When the millennia-old artifact was seized, the Fiorattis were not prosecuted, and although they still feel they have a legitimate claim to it, they did not fight the confiscation.

“I felt very sorry for her,” Del Bufalo said of Fioratti, “but I couldn’t do anything different, knowing that my museum in Nemi is missing the best part that went through the centuries, through the war, through a fire, and then through an Italian art dealer, and finally could go back to the museum. That’s the only thing I felt I should have done.”

At any rate, Italy is happy to have reclaimed one of its priceless pieces of history.

“The mosaic testifies how important and luxurious these imperial ships were,” Nemi Mayor Alberto Bertucci said in March, when the artwork was installed at the Museum of Roman Ships. “These [boats] were like buildings: They were not supposed to sail and they confirm the greatness of this emperor who wanted to show the greatness of his rule of the Roman empire through these ships.”

“This is a great day for Nemi and our entire territory!” the mayor added.

The post Ancient Roman Mosaic Recovered After Spending 50 Years as a Coffee Table first appeared on Dornob.

New Brussels-based creative practice Cobra Studios has based its whole postmodern aesthetic on these contrasts. Their debut furniture collection, “SOLIDS,” takes inspiration from the look of Roman architectural ruins, reimagining them through a filter of bright colors, minimalist shapes, and sculptural functionality.

Founders Kenny December and Hugues Delaunay traveled to Rome to study the city’s magnificent ruins before working on the collection. Delaunay in particular has been fascinated by them since childhood, and what interests him most is the way these relics of another era of humanity have remained the same while the modern city sprouted up around them.

In “SOLIDS,” the columns and crumbling walls of monuments like the Roman Forum are simplified into pure resin cylinders, spheres, rectangles, and discs resembling hard candy. Varying in size and translucence, these shapes pierce through sheets of frosted acrylic. The designers wanted them to have a certain brevity and playfulness despite the rather serious source of their inspiration.

They explain that “the mix of heavy, solid legs and a thin, soft top evokes a feeling of comfort and clemency. The supporting elements are so present that they pierce through the table tops, marking the presence of what lays underneath. Their presence organizes the tables. The top that used to be an element of priority, becomes merely a connecting piece. This ancillary function is emphasized by the matte, chalk finish.”

“The designs seek for contrast. The supports are heavy, yet transparent. Colorful yet cold. Hard, yet so soft. The distinct volumes can function as singular elements, but they decided to stay connected. The intersecting and contrasting pieces, free-standing, will hit their mark in any interior.”

The “SOLIDS” collection consists of coffee tables, side tables, dinner tables, and complementary lamps, with names like “Cicero,” “Priape,” “Santa Maria Dei Clarici,” and “Otho” after Roman churches, gods, and generals, all in shapes that “affirm the graphic design.” The floor lamp features a cylindrical glass shade supported by a thin three-legged stand, casting a green light on each of the tables.

Cobra Studios was born when architect December and scenographic designer Delaunay needed a new dining table for their apartment, and subsequently decided to make the perfect one themselves. Bringing their diverse skills and talents together, the duo experimented with materials and shapes to find their own defining aesthetic and identity.

“Hard shapes need to collide with soft touches. The pieces need to be minimalistic yet very decorative. Every piece needs to withstand time and art movements. Cobra Studios tends towards creating a world of its own, a certain form of light living, naïve but such fun.”

The designers also told Wallpaper that they’re playing with natural materials like terracotta and stone for their next collection, so we may see an interesting pivot from the synthetics of “SOLIDS.” Whatever they come up with, there’s no doubt it will be fresh and creative.

The post Geometric Glass Furniture Inspired by Roman Ruins first appeared on Dornob.

The wall-to-wall carpeting and mirrored gazebo dining room definitely had to go, but that was just the start of the renovation. Bandini wanted a total transformation that could practically double as a set for a sci-fi film. Finding an architect who understood that vision wasn’t easy, but when Michele Mole from Nemesi Studio presented renderings to him that looked like something out of Star Trek, he knew he had found the right person for the job. The next big challenge was actually bringing it to life, as virtually every component of the new interiors would have to be individually designed and hand-crafted.

Mole and Bandini spent the next four years overseeing the installation of custom steel surfaces on every floor, ceiling, and wall in the 3,444-square-foot apartment. All of the older elements were torn out and replaced with complex new arrangements of gleaming metal, complemented every now and then with a bit of wood or glass. The “experimental” floating staircase, which Bandini refers to as his “personal catwalk,” took six months to build by itself. Angular elements jut out of the walls and floor to offer built-in furniture and storage, including bookcases and strikingly abstract kitchen counters.

All that shiny steel could easily result in a space that feels like an industrial freezer. While the look might leave lovers of more traditional interiors feeling cold, it definitely exudes its intended effect. Natural light comes streaming in through generously sized windows, penetrating spaces like the bathroom to produce a warm glow. On the top level, the ceiling’s hand-hewn wooden beams offer an organic counterbalance to the sleek designs beneath it.

The bachelor pad’s vast open living area is minimally accented with elegant modern furniture, providing the ideal setting for parties of all sizes. These communal spaces lead out to a generously sized rooftop terrace with breathtaking views of the city. Since its completion, Bandini explains that it’s rarely had a quiet moment, acting as a social hub for his network of friends and associates. In a recent interview with Wallpaper, he explained that the minimalism of the space is what truly allowed it to shine.

“The apartment is the artwork. So what more do I need?”

Rome may still be a land of awe-inspiring ruins and classical statues, but Bandini’s apartment there is just one example of a new Renaissance: one that’s quietly ushering in surprising ultramodern additions like Zaha Hadid’s prizewinning MAXXI art museum. As the city continues to evolve in the 21st century and beyond, we can expect to see a lot more dramatic contrasts like these, with ancient and futuristic designs existing side-by-side.

All photos by Andrea Ferrari

The post 15th-Century Apartment in Rome Converted Into a Modern Bachelor Pad first appeared on Dornob.