The three-metre-tall Brick from a Stone installation at Clerkenwell Design Week showcased the huge potential stone bricks have as a beautiful low-carbon building material. Consisting of just under 900 stone bricks, its embodied carbon was less than a quarter of what it would have been if it had been built from traditional clay-fired bricks.
The installation was such as success that Artefact worked closely with Hutton Stone to produce a 1:3 maquette of one of the columns sculpted from a boulder of Darney Sandstone from its quarry in North Northumberland. The maquette was then submitted to Assemble RA, the committee that has curated the Architecture rooms for the world-famous Summer Exhibition this year. Assemble RA specified that it “welcomed submissions that focus on and reflect on making as a process.”
“We’re thrilled that our maquette of Brick from a Stone has been selected for such a prestigious exhibition,” said Benedetta Rogers, Director of Artefact. “It celebrates the traditional skills and new technologies used today to carve in stone and embraces all the imperfections that come from a natural material.”
“The piece hints at the potential to create a new low-carbon vernacular for masonry buildings in the UK” added fellow Director, Daniel Marmot.
Marcus Paine, Managing Director of Hutton Stone, said: “The Royal Academy of Arts has given us a chance to showcase the craftsmanship of stone masonry which has declined since the wide adoption of concrete ushered in by Modernism. The maquette also shows how we’re turning our ever-growing surplus of so-called imperfect stone into a low-carbon construction material. Any waste is unacceptable in the current climate crisis, so fundamentally this is the right thing to do.”
“As reducing embodied carbon in buildings becomes a priority, we expect architects to be drawn to the sustainability credentials of these stone bricks,” added Michael Poultney, managing director of Albion Stone. “We’re now set up to produce a million stone bricks a year. This is just the start.”
www.brickfromastone.com
