Gastón Badii:
Geologies of Craft
It has always been something normal for me, I remember when I was very young, I would spend my summer holidays at the workshop. My understanding of materials began simply by being there, in very close proximity to the craft, the tools and the material itself. It happened without me realising it. Over time, I became increasingly involved in my family archive, and devoted myself to studying and observing that legacy in more detail.
What knowledge did you inherit from previous generations, and what did you have to reconsider or learn again?
Everything. The craft gradually became lost over time. Studying that archive led me to revisit details and reconsider materials that had fallen out of use. I think it’s a constant process of learning: seeing whether what was passed down from word to mouth was actually transmitted correctly, without having access to anything written down or any definitive formula.
How does geological time influence your work? Thinking about the fact that stone contains a history that predates any human intervention by an unimaginable length of time.
Yes, the fact that stone can be thousands upon thousands of years old, while human intervention represents barely a second on that scale is an incredibly powerful factor. Something very specific in my work is understanding how stone ages after it has been worked on, and how to play with accelerating that aging process. It’s beautiful to see in cemeteries, or in European cities that are entirely built in stone, where we are able to observe that aging. The pathologies of cities, and the way plants grow across those marble slabs.
What comes first? An understanding of the block, the stone, the material itself -or an action upon the material, the way you intend to intervene in it?
I think it’s absolutely essential, in any practice, to understand the material before working on it. To understand its virtues and its flaws; which areas are more fragile or more resistant, and then design the pieces accordingly. Which pieces adapt to that material, and which don’t.
Is erosion part of your research? How do you translate those processes into the scale of an individual piece?
It’s a line of research I’ve never really shown, or have shown very little of. I have many stones I’ve collected from different places around the world - from Argentina, from the beach, from the South - and I’m interested in how they erode over time, through weather, rotation and so on. It’s something that is very present in my work.
What possibilities do you find in the means of production available to us in Argentina?
I think it’s very important, in any craft, to understand the context in which it is being practiced. That enables you to understand the tools and, consequently, the material. I always go back to two photographs from my family archive. One is of my great-grandfather’s workshop in Italy, and the other is of my grandfather’s workshop in Argentina, when they had only just moved here. The only thing that changes between those photographs is the material. Both workshops were taking commissions, always for funerary art. In Italy, they worked with solid blocks. What’s fascinating is understanding that in Argentina they worked with slabs, using faceting to generate volume. It was precisely a period of major technological shifts -you can see it in Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion. It’s a clear example of marble beginning to enter architecture in a different way. Context is something you always have to take into account, because it allows a craft to be translated in any part of the world.
How do you imagine the continuity of a craft you inherited in the face of contemporary technologies and production conditions?
I would never imagine it being isolated from the entire context surrounding it. A craft is defined by how the person doing the work dresses, by the tools and materials they use, by the way they refer to certain things, even by what they eat.
Going back to the archive, when I look at those two photographs of the Italians who came here and realise how little they differ from one another, it makes me think: that is the craft. Maintaining all of that, almost a hundred years later, like a copy repeated through time. That’s how a craft needs to be transmitted and allowed to continue growing.
Preserving the tradition.
Exactly.
What did you find in the Kavanagh building that gave rise to the proposal you developed for this project? Could you tell us about your piece?
At the beginning of the year, I worked in the Buenos Aires City Archive. I was looking through a lot of Art Deco plans for houses that had been demolished. I think it’s interesting to raise that flag again through contemporary design. Rather than simply complaining that buildings are being demolished, we can do something about it. I think the lamp for Proyecto Kavanagh has something contemporary and new in the way its typology is modulated, while remaining rooted in Art Deco. Perhaps because the light is transmitted through a very thin layer of marble, and it’s the marble itself that generates the light. Since it isn’t a synthetic material, there are many, many filters within the stone. The piece also has something of Vitró and of repetition.
The guiding idea for the project came from a cemetery whose entrance has four repeated figures, and the only thing enveloping each figure is a veil -which is what the lamp becomes. The central section is something hard, straight and modular. That’s where I allowed myself to play a little with tin, which becomes a casting rather than a soldered element. I began to play with error, too, creating a texture that contrasts with the marble, which is somewhat more refined and polished. It also works with what we were talking about in terms of time, because marble was once fluid before it solidified. This, too, is a fluid that solidifies.
Can we know which cemetery?
The one in Luján.
11/08/2026
15:30 HRS
Photo credits:
Emma Livingston
Gastón Badii is a designer and material researcher. His practice is built upon a direct relationship with stone, his family’s craft and a heritage connected to marble spanning five generations. Through a situated, artisanal and research-based approach, he develops projects that bring together design, heritage and materiality, with a particular interest in the slow processes of observing, documenting and transforming discarded materials.