Condense, an installation designed by Salon, is showcasing how the essence of natural stone and the city is concentrated through similar formations.

In the metropolises of today, we do not have enough space, time or tolerance to expand the gaps. We are getting closer and even tightening / squeezing in cities. We are intensifying. In same flow of time periods in the history, we have been seeking to create more and exist more.

Based on Nero’s Rome, dating back to the 1st century AD, Condense reflects how man-made structures behave as intense as the natural elements. Emperor Nero provided divisions in the city to break apart the structures from one another. At that time, Rome was the first city ever applied the parcellization system, changing the possession states of the society. This period witnessed the birth of the concept of property.

Taking Nero’s Rome as a reference, we can develop different readings to today’s metropolis.

The idea of the installation is based on creating a connection between the formations of the natural stone and the emergence of the cities. While investigating the relationship between the cities and the formations, the design team took the way how Metamorphic rock responses to gravity and pressure as a reference.

Metamorphic rocks form through any other existing rock exposed to extremely intense heat and pressure.

As the gravity and pressure form the Metamorphic Rock; urban facts such as migration, housing, trade and finance compress the city. In Condense, this transformation of pre-existing and current forms generates a future projection for cities through the surfaces of natural marble walls. Rethinking the wall as a fact representing a concentrated city, Condense shows this intense formations by taking the crystals of the marble as design language, reflecting marble’s natural spiral form and cycle within the installation.