1990 Clizia / History

Mangiarotti has never lost sight of the evolution of manufacturing processes. Clizia, the outdoor seating from 1990, puts the precision allowed by then new CNC technologies to good use. The upper edge of the seat coincides with the lower edge so that the monolithic sections of “Clizia” chairs are made out of the same block of marble in one single cut performed by numerically controlled machines, simultaneously creating two chairs, optimising the material by reducing waste to a minimum. Clizia becomes a sculpture for sitting with obvious sculptural, sinuous and flowing lines, seemingly in contrast with the hardness and staticity of the stone it is made of. 

Clizia stems from the thinking behind Cono-Cielo (cone-sky). Here, one block of Carrara marble is cut in the way that the resulting pieces could be stacked one on top of another. A single compression cable was then enough to guarantee structural stability of this monument to the possibilities allowed by the new manufacturing technologies in stone-working.