果冻影院

The Bartlett School of Architecture hosted a five-day workshop on structural stone design and construction. The workshop was held at the Building Crafts College in East London and welcomed a diverse group of built environment students, academics and professionals to explore structural stone as an alternative to carbon-intensive building methods.

Organised by Associate Professors Oliver Wilton and Klaas De Rycke, the workshop is situated in the context of their research on experiential pedagogy and bringing bio- and geo-sourced materials into the modern architectural realm. Participants engaged in a series of talks, demonstrations and practical exercises, including designing and learning to calculate the stone structure, preparing fabrication documents, using hand tools to cut the limestone blocks and creating timber centring to provide temporary support for the stone structure during assembly. Over five days, they worked with Bath Stone, a soft English limestone that is easy to cut, to create an original stone structure.

Commenting on the significance of the workshop, Oliver and Klaas said:

鈥淚n academia, it can be a struggle to have the serendipity we need to mix all sorts of knowledge, skills and contexts to urgently address the current ecological tragedy and move towards more sustainable modes of architecture. What better than to mingle craftspeople, makers, industry, teachers, researchers, student architects, engineers and stonemasons together around an old new material to address this current challenge?鈥�

Nancy Peskett, Apprenticeships Tutor at the Building Crafts College, said:

鈥淲e really enjoyed being part of this multidisciplinary project and our students got invaluable insights into how their skills fit into the design and construction of structural stone architecture. There was a real buzz in our workshops and we look forward to seeing how we can build on this partnership.鈥�

Tim Lucas, Associate Professor of Structural Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture, said:

鈥淲e've seen some inspirational stone engineering projects and learnt some surprising historical uses of stone. We were engrossed with templates, cutting stone with saws and making falsework to suspend gravity whilst putting it all together.鈥�

The delivery leads thank the academic and industry collaborators and sponsors for their excellent support. The Building Crafts College provided the workshop space and their stonemasonry tutors as part of the teaching team. Paul Vergonjeanne and Paul Nougayrede from the Geometry Structure Architecture (GSA) Lab at the Architecture School of Paris-Malaquais, PSL University contributed expert teaching from first principles and sketches through to the finished structure. Lovell Stone Group provided 200mm scants of their beautiful Hartham Park Bath Stone for the workshop. The Stonemasonry Company provided a 200kg prefabricated 鈥榢eystone鈥� that the students then built a structure to support and delivered a live demonstration of post-tensioning a beam made with stones cut by the students. With special thanks to The Bartlett鈥檚 short courses and communications teams for their support in making the workshop possible.

鈥�鈥淚'm interested in how graphic statics can be applied practically in my student project. I was excited about the workshop because my project mainly involves using robotics, so I haven't manually worked with stone before, which is very new to me.鈥�

鈥� Ruoxi Li, Design for Manufacture MArch student

More information

• View Oliver Wilton鈥檚 profile
• View Klaas De Rycke鈥檚 profile
• Find out more about postgraduate study at The Bartlett School of Architecture
• Find out more about short courses at The Bartlett School of Architecture

Images: Oliver Wilton