Entering the premises of Via Cernaia 1, where Margrave and Hannes Peer presenting their work together, you enter a space that is sacred, intimate and uniquely domestic even within this subterranean environment where natural light cannot reach. There’s something deliberately counterintuitive about presenting a house made entirely of stone in an exhibition defined by novelty and surface. And yet that is exactly what it is The Marble Houseafter the success of last year’s CRASH exhibition, he did it for this year – not as a challenge, but as a considered position.
Hannes Peer has built his practice between craft, material design, cultural research, spatial and architectural experimentation, which is evident in the work presented at Milan Design Week 2026. The starting point for The Marble House it was, in fact and by his own admission, a very challenging one. “It’s a garage” says Peer.Basement, no light, no natural light.“His response was not to overcome limitations but to completely counter them.”I was really thinking: we’re going to make it work, but it’s going to go completely against the space as it is. Give life to the space, make it domestic.“
The portrait of Hannes Peer © courtesy Margraf
The Marble House © courtesy Margraf
The Marble House © courtesy Margraf
The Marble House © courtesy Margraf
The Marble House © courtesy Margraf
The Marble House © courtesy Margraf
The Marble House © courtesy Margraf
The result resonates with the atmosphere of Carlo Scarpa but also with the visual world of Prometheus, and occupies a subterranean space beneath the garden of a historic villa on Via Cernaia. You descend into it via a winding staircase, through a threshold that is anything but casual, into a world where walls, floors and ceilings share the same marble provenance.
The main stone is Santafiora marble, quarried in the Manciano open-air cave in Maremma, Tuscany: dense, low porosity, resistant to fire, thermal shock and weathering. “It is an Italian marble, very special,says Peer.It looks a little like concrete, but it’s also a little softer, warmer.”
Santafiora covers the entire interior while the more translucent varieties – onyx, quartz, agate – were given a different role. “We used the most precious marbles as paintings. So we presented them as paintings – marble on top of marble. Something completely unprecedented.“
Against the weight of all this stone, light became the critical variable. Without windows and without a natural source, the lighting system from Buzzi & Buzzi he had to convince with zenithal light and backlighting – light cuts that weave through the space to pass through translucent stone, revealing its inner layering. “A lot of architects were really asking where the light comes from,” says Peer. “So I think we achieved a very good illusion. It’s all, of course, a metaphysical illusion – that’s the main idea here.“
The series of rooms functions as a promenade, each space separate but never cut off from the whole. The central atrium is its alcove, where a blade of light and a continuous sheet of water trace movement and sound on the surface of the mineral – two sculptures designed as part of the project and realized with Margraf’s technical art – inhabit the reflecting pool. The water was Hannes Peerhis idea, and it turned out to be the biggest challenge the century-old company had ever faced. “If it wasn’t already hard enough to build underground, building an entire apartment, bringing water underground was a huge, huge challenge.In his reading, the water feature roots the design in the logic of the Roman villa – a centering element around which the rest of the imaginary house is organized.
The conversation pit turns inward, anchored by a backlit wall of onyx and semi-precious stones with Taurine Planets gems. Invested volumes from Nalesos enter softness without concession. The bedroom closes in around you, with marble wrapping protectively, a large fabric that introduces a controlled friction between weight and warmth.
None of this would exist without what the designer describes as a genuine collaborative process – one made possible by a client willing to follow along.
“Having a partner like Margrave – the direction, the management is very young, I think in their 30s – it was a very important part of the process. They are very good listeners“, he says.And I’m a good listener too. So we were trying to use their materials as best we could. And we are happy with the result.“
