Portuguese Marble from Évora Has a New York World Trade Center Address
- @ Cynthia Adina Kirkwood
- Jun 23
- 6 min read
During the day, (especially a cloudy one), the marble is hard and mute. At night, however, when the building is lit from within, it takes on a lantern effect, illuminating the striations in the stone, which are laid out in a symmetrical pattern evoking the grain of a textile. "The marble is quiet during the day when the memorial is at its most active, then it comes on as the city gets dark," the architect designer Joshua Ramus, of REX, a New York architectural firm, told the Los Angeles Times (December 26, 2023). (Photo from the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center)
For the cube to glow at night, "We designed 80 chandeliers with Tillotson Design Associates (of New York). They're amazing objects, which illuminate the marble evenly," architect designer Joshua Ramus told Architectural Record (January 20, 2022). (Photo from the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center)
Even before the Ronald O. Perelman Arts Center opened in downtown Manhattan, the installation of 4,896 thin panels of translucent marble caused a sensation, reported Architectural Record. During the day, the cubic box's marble is cream-colored while, at night, when it is backlit, the marble turns amber with gray veins.
Three thousand tons of marble extracted from a quarry in Vila Viçosa, Estremoz Municipality, in Évora District, constructed the facade of the Perelman Arts Center, according to Público (September 23, 2023), also known as 6 World Trade Center.
The building is part of the redevelopment of the site of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which leveled the area. A performing arts center was a key part of the plan to uplift and celebrate the spirit, reported Starr Foundation, which contributed $20.5 million of the project's $500 million cost.
The Ronald O. Perelman Arts Center is located alongside the 2014 One World Trade Center, overlooking the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. It is named for the philanthropist who donated $75 million to the project, and it opened in September 2023, according to de zeen (September 14, 2023).
The "mystery box", as architect designer Joshua Ramus calls it in the Los Angeles Times, is a 129,000-square foot (39,319-square meter) building on multiple levels, according to its website. The performance space offers flexible layouts in three theater spaces, which can be combined to provide dozens of seating configurations, and the lobby level includes a restaurant, bar, terrace and stage.
"The entire building is made of marble from Vila Viçosa," Manuel Simões, of Granoguli, the company which quarried the stone, told Lusa news agency, according to Público. The firm was founded in 2008. However, its founders are a family's third generation linked to ornamental stone, according to its website.
"This is one of those projects that you do once in a lifetime," said Manuel Simões, adding that the project's complexity "required very careful work and selection" because "the facades are precisely identical".
The owner of the Alentejo-based company recalled that the opportunity to supply the stone for the arts center arose through another Portuguese company, LSI Stone, headquartered in Leiria, in 2018, following contact from an English consultancy firm specializing in large-scale stonework, reported Público. Regina Vitório and and Pedro Vazão established LSI Stone in 1999, combining their families' years of experience in the sector.
According to LSI Stone's website, for design architect Joshua Ramus, the most important aspect of the arts center design "was to create a concept which was simultaneously respectful yet managed to have an important identity that conveyed the building as the object signifying the restorative powers of art". He noted that the scheme needed to be conscious of its context and possess a sober deference.
"Marble quarried in Portugal is mostly quarried in the area of Estermoz, traditionally naming these unique natural stones as Estremoz marble. A few options in Estremoz potentially could meet the design's major requirements. Research pointed out one quarry, in particular, which could deliver translucid amber marble in quantities the project required along with the vein range."
Granoguli extracted 3,000 tons of marble from a quarry in Vila Viçosa, Estremoz Municipality, in Évora District, for construction of the Ronald O. Perelman Arts Center. (Photo from Granoguli's Facebook page)
Architect Joshua Ramus visited the quarry many times, he told Architectural Record (January 20, 2022).
"We would go and direct where they should cut next. . . . From our earliest competition renderings, we were sure that diagonals would make the most beautiful composition. So we specified the slabs be cut so as to give us those diagonals. Wanting the angle of the veins to be consistent made it more difficult for the stonecutters. They had to quarry blocks large enough to cut within the angle range we required and then rotate the slabs before cutting them into their final dimensions.
"To stay on schedule, we had to compose the facade in bands as the marble came out of the mountain -- we couldn't wait until we had all the material to decide on the final composition. So we created a process that we felt would result in something exceptional even though we were not exactly sure what it would be -- what I like to call 'productivity losing control'.
"We did lots of tests, and we came to the conclusion that, because we did not know how consistent the stone would be, making each facade symmetrical both horizontally and vertically gave us the greatest chance of achieving aesthetic success."
Radiating out from the center, four identical stones were needed in each position. Because there are four facades, 16 identical, or nearly identical pieces, were needed from the quarry.
"But as you slice up a block, you can't be sure how long a particular pattern will continue," said the architect. "Plus, even if you get 16 similar slices, one or more can break. These half-inch slabs are very fragile. So, we spent a year and a half finding slabs that were out of sequence or even from multiple blocks but that looked almost identical.
"We couldn't predict what would come out of the mountain. And if there was something odd about the pattern on one facade, but not the others, it would have looked like a mistake. Making the four facades identical is a feat we pulled off despite the chorus of naysayers insisting that it was impossible."
Manuel Simões, of Granoguli, told Público: "I still keep five or six blocks that have been approved by the architect in case of an accident -- and because it's a source of pride."
"On the inside, in sunlight, the effect is very dramatic, with brighter colors and more pronounced veins in the stone than the exterior leads you to expect. It's like being inside a tiger's skin," according to Architectural Record. (Photo by @ Iwan Baan)
Simões said that the initial processing of the stone was done by LSI Stone, according to Público, whose extensive portfolio includes the limestone facade and interior flooring of the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, according to the firm's website. After this step, he said that the marble panels were sent to a company in France, where glass was glued to each piece, and to another in Germany, which was responsible for assembling the building's facades, reported Público.
The stone is half an inch (1.3 centimeters) thick, as thick as possible to show the depth of the veining, architect Ramus told Architectural Record. If it were thicker, its expansion and contraction could have caused delamination. A layer of glass is laminated to each side of the stone, sealing it in. If the stone hydrated and dehydrated, it could begin to bow. Each glass-stone-glass sandwich, which is 3 feet (.9 meters) high and 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide, is part of a thicker insulated unit. The outermost piece of glass has a texture similar to that of honed stone.
"The measure of its success is that many people don't realize the outer surface is glass, not stone," said Ramus.
According to Público, Manuel Simões, of Granoguli, declined to reveal the contractual details:
"This is the kind of project that doesn't make us rich, it makes us proud."
The New York Times architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, said, "Lower Manhattan could have hardly asked for a more spectacular work of public architecture," according to the website of the New York architectural firm REX. (Photo from the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center)
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