Italian Marble Kitchens for Architects and Contract Projects

As an Italian marble kitchen supplier for architects and contract projects, Michelessi acts as the single source for everything in stone: it receives the practice's design, turns it into fabrication drawings, chooses the slabs with you, cuts and finishes every piece in its workshop in Aprilia, between Rome and Latina, and fits it with its own team. The workshop has worked marble since 1976 and has long stood alongside architects, interior designers and building contractors on private residences, offices, hotels and large supply contracts, in Italy and abroad. That is what the trade calls ‘contract’: stonework supplied to a design for villas, hotels, residences and hospitality spaces.

For the designer it means three practical things. The design stays yours: the workshop does not replace it, it makes it buildable in stone. Responsibility is not divided between a slab merchant, a fabricator and a fitter, because drawings, cutting and fitting all answer to the same workshop. And the same workshop makes a single worktop or the complete kitchen, cabinets included: the range is on our page about bespoke indoor marble kitchens.

Inside the company sits a technical office with an in-house architect: someone who speaks the practice's language. There are two ways of working: from your drawings, which are checked and converted into cutting drawings, or by developing the design together from a plan and an idea.

The technical office produces three things. The survey: in Lazio our technicians come to site; further afield we work from dimensions taken by the practice or the contractor following our instructions, and checked with us before cutting. On the most complex sites a template is made, a full-size outline of the worktop. The fabrication drawings: every piece with its dimensions, its thickness (normally 2 or 3 cm), the edge profile, the cut-outs for sink, hob and sockets, the position of the joints and the direction of the vein. The 3D design: the kitchen set in its room, with the veining of the chosen slab, to show the client and to approve before the stone is touched. Revisions are handled remotely, by email or video call; nothing is cut until the drawing is approved.

Marble cannot be specified from a photograph. That is why the workshop sends samples of the stones and finishes under consideration, to be set against the real light of the room, the floors and the cabinet fronts. Then come the slabs, no two alike even within the same block: they are chosen in person at the Aprilia showroom, or remotely, from high-resolution photographs and on a video call in front of the slabs. The final slab is photographed in full and approved before cutting.

For book-matched walls and islands, where the vein has to carry on from one element to the next, the choice is made on the block, with the slabs laid side by side like the pages of a book, and the drawing records where on the slab each piece falls. One technical caution: marble has moderate heat resistance and is sensitive to acids (lemon, vinegar, wine). Where use will be heavy, the same design can be made in quartzite, granite or a sintered stone such as Dekton or Laminam.

This is where an architect's kitchen parts company with a standard one. Among the pieces that leave the workshop: the monolithic marble island, with top and sides mitred at 45° so that the vein falls as a waterfall; the sink carved from the same stone as the worktop; the induction hob set flush; the cantilevered breakfast bar, carried by a steel structure hidden in the cabinet; tall units and wall panels clad in the stone of the island, into which ovens and wine cabinet disappear; curved counters; sides in backlit onyx, to be kept for non-working surfaces because onyx is delicate.

Each calls for design decisions taken early: where the joints fall, how much the piece weighs and how it gets into the building, what structure carries it, where the light passes. The technical office records them in the fabrication drawings, so that nothing is left to improvise on site.

All fabrication takes place in Aprilia. CNC cutting centres transfer the dimensions of the drawings to the stone, with the same precision on every piece; the craftsmen's hands take over where the machine stops: matching the veins, closing the 45° mitres, the edges, the carved sinks. Surfaces receive the chosen finish (polished, honed or brushed) and the protective treatment.

Before crating, when the project allows, the kitchen is dry-assembled in the workshop: every element is checked against its neighbour, as drawn. The practice can attend in person or by video call; it is the moment when a correction still costs little.

A residential building with several apartments, a villa with a main kitchen and a service kitchen: when there is more than one kitchen the method does not change, but more order is needed. The workshop is equipped for the one-off piece and the large supply alike.

In practice: each kitchen has its own drawing and its own code, marked on every piece and on the crate; slabs are reserved from the same block, so that tone and vein stay consistent from one room to the next; every room is surveyed separately, because two rooms identical on paper are rarely so as built; deliveries and fitting are scheduled with the contractor, around the other trades. Where the budget must be contained, stone is paired with the Domina, Noè, Era 02 and Volo 01 modular kitchens, with worktops in marble, Dekton, Fenix or quartz shaped in Aprilia.

Each element is packed in the workshop once it is finished: pieces protected one by one and at the corners, set upright or flat according to shape, secured in timber crates built to the size of the load and numbered to match the fitting drawing. For deliveries abroad, transport and customs documents are prepared with the freight forwarder; the mode (road, sea or air) is chosen according to destination, volume and urgency.

In Italy fitting is carried out by Michelessi's own team: they check the dimensions on site, level the worktops, close the joints following the vein and coordinate the sink and hob connections with the installers. Abroad, installation is agreed with the project: our technicians follow the assembly on site, or guide the local contractor with the numbered fitting drawing and instructions on adhesives, sealants and joints. Our work abroad has a precise name, the Dubai project: bespoke interiors and exteriors in marble, natural stone, wood and steel, designed and built in Aprilia and installed in the residence by our craftsmen.

Final drawings are not required: what you have is enough, provided it is dimensioned. The table shows what we ask for and why.

The quotation is free, as is the site survey in Rome, Latina and throughout Lazio; it comes in Italian or English together with the 3D design, with transport, fitting and lead times defined for your site. To begin, there is the marble kitchen quotation page.

The remote method, step by step, is in the guide to the bespoke marble kitchen from Italy, delivered worldwide; the floors, cladding and furnishings that carry the stone of the kitchen into the rest of the project are on the bespoke interiors page; for the detail that ties the worktop to the wall, read about the marble kitchen splashback. The Aprilia showroom, Via Pontina Km 45,350, is best visited by telephone appointment.