Stone specialist Lapicida has opened a new 500m² showroom in London’s up-market King’s Road in Chelsea.

From the bones of an industrial building, Lapicida has created what it describes as “a total environment in stone”. There is stone on walls, on floors, on ceilings, as architectural elements and as one-off works of art.

With the showroom designed as a series of sets entered through a giant classical column, the sense of theatre is enhanced by Sally Storey’s spectacular lighting schemes.

Nowhere is the effect more dazzling than in the ‘Dark Zone’, where semi-precious stone and glass mosaics glow and sparkle with internal and ambient light effects that respond as visitors walk through the space.

A quiet sense of history pervades a 100m² area of antique floors where there are marble, limestone and terracotta pavements.

Lapicida shows its high-tech in-house manufacturing capabilities in objects carved on its CNC machines. Water jet and laser cutting techniques have been used to create new finishes on stone, adding textural interest and etching bespoke designs. Silver, nickel and brass has been bonded to textured stone tiles and architectural elements.

In the ‘Urban Garden’ there is paving, balustrading and a wall of sandstone bamboo. A contemporary ‘Kitchen’ has white petrified wood. The wood-panelled ‘Library’ even has stone books as well as an antique Barr de Montpellier floor. Marble bathrooms showcase stone as floors, walls and showertrays.

The showroom has meeting areas for designers and their clients and a Stone Library containing more than 300 stone samples. Lapicida’s staff can advise on anything to do with stone, from the straightforward products sold from stock to complex one-off design and manufacturing projects.