Caricamento Square, Genova
The seafront in Genoa boasts many impressive features. Piazza Caricamento, designed by Renzo Piano, offers a successful opening of vistas in the route following the seafront. The pavement is required to be a homogenous background to all these impressive features. Colombino was selected for its light veining and its changing hues from subtle grey to small amounts of browner content. The great thickness is taken advantage of to carve the surface with deep diagonal grooves. The ashlar is simply straight coursed; it is required that blocks are laid in alternate succession, their diagonal lines opposing. The effect, clearly visible in natural light and especially in oblique light, is of a sort of two-tone effect between adjacent slabs, adding to the colours already naturally existing in the stone.