Fragmenta: “the revival of lost forms”

In October, in Beirut, reclaimed marble fragments become gesture, form, and urban narrative. FRAGMENTA – The Revival of Lost Forms is not just an exhibition but a platform for material and cultural reflection that spreads throughout the city, turning discarded pieces into acts of rebirth. Founded by Nour Najem and Guilaine Elias and curated by Gregory Gatserelia, the project takes shape in the industrial archives of Najem Group & Co., a historic Lebanese company active since the 1980s in stone craftsmanship, now reopened as a space for experimentation and new manufacturing.


BB Studio Fragmenta © Marya Gazzaoui Alameddine and Charbel Saade

For this first edition, 49 emerging and established designers and artists were invited to work with production waste: broken slabs, forgotten samples, discarded fragments. The rule is both radical and poetic: at least 70% of each piece must be made from reclaimed marble, transformed through minimal, thoughtful interventions in direct dialogue with the master craftsmen of the Najem workshop. In a city like Beirut, built through layers and contrasts, the logic of the fragment is part of its urban landscape. Here, the practice of spolia — an ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern tradition that reuses architectural elements from the past to create new forms — is not just a technical gesture but a way of inhabiting time: nothing truly disappears; everything transforms. FRAGMENTA follows this cultural trajectory, treating each leftover piece as a living fragment of history — to be reactivated, not archived. Among the 49 participants are leading names in contemporary design such as Karen Chekerdjian, Khaled El Mays, Carlo Massoud, Richard Yasmine, Tessa Sakhi, and Andrea Mancuso — the latter representing the international presence — alongside a new generation of designers who view marble not as a finished material but as the beginning of a narrative.


Immagine a sinistra: BB Studio Cybelle Moutran Ceramics Fragmenta © Marya Gazzaoui Alameddine and Charbel Saade
Immagine a destra: BB Studio Carlo Massoud Fragmenta © Marya Gazzaoui Alameddine and Charbel Saade

FRAGMENTA thus becomes a nomadic exhibition, spreading works across multiple sites in the city and turning Beirut into a material map made of presences, appearances, and fragments. It is not simply a scattered exhibition, but an emotional geography of matter: once moved from the industrial to the urban space, reclaimed marble becomes a symbol of a culture choosing to regenerate itself not through producing the new, but by reinterpreting what already exists.

The curatorial journey unfolds through five thematic chapters — Contemplation, Spolia, Craftsmanship, In the Raw, and Cosmic Portal — forming a true experiential journey. It opens with Contemplation, a silent entryway where stone becomes an inner mirror, evoking stillness, time, and mortality. From there, one enters Spolia – The Revival of Lost Forms, where architectural fragments are recomposed as bridges between past and present, transforming fractures into continuity. Craftsmanship celebrates the manual gesture — precise, imperfect, human — as an act of resistance to mass production. In the Raw exposes stone in its most radical nakedness: irregular edges, cuts, scars left visible as part of its language. The journey culminates in the Cosmic Portal, a threshold space where stone once again becomes spiritual matter, as in ancient rituals — not an end, but a passage.


BB Studio Sara Badr Schmidt Fragmenta © Marya Gazzaoui Alameddine and Charbel Saade

In an era defined by the speed of consumption, FRAGMENTA reaffirms a possible direction for contemporary design: not to produce more, but to produce differently. Here, material is not used — it is listened to. Each fragment is treated as an archive of time, a repository of gestures and memories. The city itself becomes a place where design does not simply exhibit — it resists, imagines, and reactivates. At its heart, FRAGMENTA celebrates the alliance between craftsmanship, material heritage, and community, bringing to the forefront a family-run production chain — the Najem Group — spanning three generations and now opening itself to artistic experimentation.