Journal

A 600-piece pink onyx ceiling for Skirt Faqra

October 2026 · Project story

The idea was simple to say and hard to build: make it feel as if Himalayan salt were cascading from the ceiling onto the guests of Skirt, in Faqra. Our answer was 600 pieces of pink onyx, each one shaped by hand, fitted with its own light and hung on its own cable.

The finished pink onyx ceiling glowing above the long dining tables at Skirt, Faqra

Starting from raw stone

Pink onyx arrives in the workshop as raw blocks. We broke and shaped it by hand into irregular pieces, so that no two are the same, the way salt crystals never are. Onyx is translucent: lit from within, each piece glows warm, and its veins and colour come alive.

Raw blocks and hand-broken pieces of pink onyx in the Vertice Projects workshop

Designing the cascade in 3D

Before cutting anything at scale, we modelled the whole canopy in 3D. The model fixed the density of the pieces, the height of each one and the way the cascade flows above the tables, so the installation reads as one cloud from every seat while leaving room for the guests below.

600 lights, 600 cables

Every piece has its own light source and its own suspension cable. That means 600 connections to plan, route and test. On site, the team wired the ceiling following the layout from the 3D model, piece by piece, on a tablet.

An installer wiring the light fittings while following the layout on a tablet

The ceiling plate

The pieces hang from a ceiling plate that carries both their weight and the wiring. Fixing it was a four-person job on scaffolding, and the step everything else depends on: once the plate is right, the cascade can be built beneath it.

Hanging it, piece by piece

The last stage was the slowest and the most satisfying: hanging the onyx, piece by piece, from the scaffolding, adjusting heights as the cloud took shape until the last piece was in place.

Installers on scaffolding beneath the ceiling cabling as the onyx pieces are hung

The result

Lit, the 600 stones turn the room warm and quiet, with a soft glow that falls onto the tables. It is the kind of piece we love to make: a simple idea, carried through by engineering and a great deal of craftsmanship.

Close-up of the hand-shaped pink onyx pieces, each lit and hung on its own cable

See the full project: Skirt Faqra. More about our custom lighting in Lebanon.

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