“Our participation [in Milan Design Week] has a romantic origin,” says Eleni Petaloti, one half of New York and Athens-based Objects of Common Interest. “I always complain about us Greeks not being able to be ambitious together. So it was very important for me, psychologically, to be a part of this.” The Thessaloniki-born architect and designer, who runs the studio with her husband, Leonidas Trampoukis, is talking about the pair’s project in Milan this year at Alcova’s Pasino Glasshouses, entitled “Soft Horizons”. Featuring Greek marble from seven different companies with quarries around the country, from Athens to Thassos, the immersive installation features nine marble sculptures made by the designers using off-cuts, as well as some seating installations.

Petaloti jokes that Italy has always been good at selling itself, from furniture to olive oil, whereas Greece has been “very introverted”. Which is why Objects of Common Interest jumped at the chance to be involved in a collaboration with the Greek Marble Association. Greece has been realising that its stone trade, which can trace its history back to the Parthenon, has something to say. In fact, at the end of 2022 the association, with the backing of Enterprise Greece investment entity, created a brand name to help bring it to the world: “Greek Marble: Then. Now. Forever”.

The Alcova installation is an important step. “We haven’t worked on our branding and storytelling [until now],” says Irini Papagiannouli, the third-generation family member of John Papagiannoulis Bros, one of the companies that has supplied stone this year. “But the history is there.” Irini has been instrumental in helping to turn the Design Week show into a reality. 

Objects of Common Interest’s Petaloti admits that she didn’t always like marble growing up. “It was everywhere,” she says. “A plaza, a church, people’s houses if they wanted to be fancy in the 1980s and 1990s.” But she has come to fall in love with the fact that it is part of Greece’s “cultural DNA”, witnessing it first-hand working with a seventh-generation marble maker from Tinos. In fact, Objects of Common Interest’s first design, the Bent Stool from 2016, was made from the material. Nonetheless, the concept behind “Soft Horizons” has been to get away from the imposing and sometimes overwhelming way in which marble is often presented and instead go for something “ethereal”, as Petaloti puts it. 

The “Soft Horizons” objects, which the studio calls totems due to the way they are assembled, each use several different pieces of marble that have names as diverse as Thassos Silver stream and Arabescato Kasta, and sit on top of a water pond, while two of the pieces will react to motion and move as a visitor approaches (“It’s a comment on how marble and humans have the same link to nature,” says Petaloti). A red, disc-like speaker from New York’s Oda hangs above the installation, playing sounds from the production process. While all the focus has been on the Alcova show, Objects of Common Interest say that this is the starting point for taking Greek marble around the world. “This isn’t about impressing because it doesn’t have that scale,” adds the designer. “Instead, it’s a personal dialogue with a material.”
objectsofcommoninterest.com