In the Swedish town of Tibro, Anders Berensson Architects, in collaboration with the Municipality and local art students, designed a public stage called Rock Stage that explores the potential of faux marble painting. With its unreal dimensions, the faux marble is eye-catching yet authentic in a way that engages and attracts the attention of passers-by and evades several limitations, including cost and weight, of natural marble.
Rock Stage is a simple wood structure with a secondary system of marbleized fiber cement sheet attached. The result is the appearance of heavy stone blocks.
In collaboration with the students, the architects conducted marbelizing tests parallel with the structure's design. The project required three years of planning, sketching, and finally realizing the project with the municipality Tibrokommun, students, and teachers at the craft school Tibro Hantverksakademi.
The project is the first permanent structure out of fifteen sketches made in the urban development project 'Tibro Train Tracks.' The first phase involved a dialogue with citizens, asking about their needs and wants. The next step looked at the town's local resources and production capacity. In the final stage, the fifteen sketches were produced based on the earlier phases, with this being the first moving to completion.
