Roman travertine base
Phase 1 interim swatch — photography pending.
- Technique
- Roman travertine (Italy) used as continuous material strata across floor functions — point-of-sale, seating, low walls
- Family
- stone
- First appearance
- Issue 01 · apl-soho
Editor note
Roman travertine — the Italian quarried travertine famously used across Roman civic and papal architecture — deployed at APL SoHo as a continuous material strata running from point-of-sale through stepped seating to low walls. The material choice is deliberate register alignment: Roman travertine is the stone of Mayfair and Bond Street luxury flagships, applied here to performance-sneaker retail. It produces the category-crossover effect Al-Jawad Pike's panoptic amphitheatre is built on — material vocabulary reads as contemporary-fashion-flagship first, sneaker-shop second. The Chipperfield-school material discipline is visible: a single base material held across every floor function, with the curving artisan plaster walls above it and the onyx vanity rooms pulling away from it. Sourcing is through specialist stone merchants at flagship specification. Roman travertine is specifiable as new-build material — widely available through Italian quarries — but the APL register (selection, finish, continuous application) requires project-led specification rather than off-the-shelf supply.
Specification notes
- Continuous material strata: POS desks → stepped seating → low walls
- Paired with teardrop plaster columns and artisan plaster perimeter wall
- Italian Roman-quarry travertine (specifier-led sourcing)
- Material discipline visibly Chipperfield-school (Al-Jawad + Pike both ex-Chipperfield)