Behind the Scenes of The New Stone Age Exhibition at The Building Centre

After having to close due to Covid-19 The New Stone Age Exhibition has reopened and is staying at The Building Centre until September 2020! In celebration of the extended stay we thought we would share with you the background of the exhibition, the work that has gone in to creating the sculptures in place and the philosophy behind the work. 

 (This piece has been written by our very own Creative Director Pierre Bidaud, one of the curators of The New Stone Age Exhibition at The Building Centre)

When, 4 weeks prior to Christmas, I was asked to curate an exhibition about stone, alongside Steve Webb and Amin Taha, I thought that Christmas had come early! 

For a long time I had been keen on organising an exhibition showcasing the craft of stonemasonry, both in traditional and modern applications, the same skills that are necessary to build our beautiful stone staircase and architectural stone work, the same skills that our team have been honing for over a decade. 

With this incredible opportunity, of course, came constraints. Working with the two other collaborators we found that choosing a subject that would interest the construction industry and showcasing it in just less than 2 months was going to be a big challenge. 

Thankfully we quickly came to understand that it was the duty of all curators to place the incredible sustainability of stone, and its ease of use, at the centre of the exhibition. We came to agree that in order to be even more informative and exciting the rock should be presented as a load bearing material to demonstrate how, with new lifting technology, engineering software and curiosity, stone is more than ever relevant. 

We decided to create a collection of new stone buildings from the last 20 years, all utilising loadbearing stone from the 3 main stone categories, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. To keep on message we chose projects that would have typically been completed using wood as the internal insulation or floor slabs. The Stonemasonry Company Limited have been relentlessly using new technologies to push the boundaries in stone building, from post tensioning spiral stone staircases to reinforcing sandstone or marble and thus debunking the long standing ideas about stone and its applications. We wanted to go even further with this exhibition, for the full-scale model we wanted to break the well-known bias’ about our material - it’s not structural, it’s not high tech and it is only relevant to heritage projects and expensive houses. 

What would be bold enough and inspiring?  

Why not a 12m long beam?  Instead of one, why not two of them to form a floor? Could this be a typical office floor? The Crescent opposite The Building Centre was ideal! The Building Centre team got on case with the planning application for a swift decision.

The beams themselves were simple, 17 pieces of stone, drilled and then assembled on a special rig, but the set up required the sourcing of 72 meters of cable, all associated equipment and a lorry, a big one. This was complicated by the fact that for our special jointing mix and grout needed 7 days curing time to be fully safe and secure, time which we did not really have to spare.

Our next challenge was deciding how to showcase the floors’ application. Amin Taha proposed a model of a stone tower, 30 storeys high, as per our successful collaboration at 15 Clerkenwell Close (https://www.thestonemasonrycompany.co.uk/clerkenwell-close) and Steve Webb was keen to get a thin vault system with clips to show the versatility of stone building on what had already been achieved, on a smaller scale, at the V&A (https://www.thestonemasonrycompany.co.uk/vanda).

Steve, Amin and their teams rushed to get all critical designs ready for us so that we could get cutting sheets ready, materials ordered, templates prepared and Human Resources arranged to complete the work required. 

But with so little time, we had to get help of all our partners, asking for a quick turn around for the cutting of the, affordable, Massangis stone at Polycor and asking the biggest supplier of dimensional stone, Ketton Stone, for the use of their amazing CNC machine to produce the stone footing/scarf jointed base.

For the tower, we decided to have some work completed by water jet cutting locally, we then meshed the back of the stone to reinforce it and avoid breakage.

The footing was going to be done on a lathe to begin with and then it was put on the 5 axis machine for the fine carving using diamond tools, routers and broaches, where it was worked 24 hours a day for 3 full days. 

 Little by little, in the space of 4 weeks, stones were delivered then drilled and set out, tower pieces lay dry and finishes were applied, stone bases were lovingly finished by hand, models of staircases by Foster and Partners were made out of white Pierre de Lens stone and incrusted in the Belgium blue stone plinth.

All the while our sponsor Polycor, along with Amin Taha and Goupwork, were working hard on analysing the carbon footprint of stone and its cost to present alongside the Stone tower project.

With the loading of the beams going smoothly, and reassured by the strength of our mortar, we set off for London for a couple of days of installation. Being well prepared the whole process of setting out the heavy models as well as installing the experimental beams we took only 3 days, and we were on schedule. With the efficient help from the Building Centre staff, the models from the different practices were placed on bespoke wood benches and, with everything now in its right place, we were ready. 

Finally on the 26th of February 2020, the whole show was unveiled, the stone floor slabs and beam on the Crescent, the CNC manufactured base and thin vault system, Groupwork’s stone tower and our post tensioned stone staircase were sat alongside the models the stone used for each project from Studio Lada, Elizabeth Polzella, Gilles Perraudin, Studio Ensemble, Anasta and Frederick Carl Svensted. 

We hope that this first attempt to enlighten the building industry on the versatility and durability of stone as a structural and diverse material will be a success and that the gospel of stone well heard! 

Thank you for taking the time to read this short piece about the work that went in to this wonderful exhibition, we hope that you have the opportunity to see all of this work for yourself. You can find out more about The New Stone Age here- https://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/whats_on/exhibitions/the-new-stone-age-2020-02-27#part-of-series.