SPECIAL SESSION

6th International Conference on Structures in Architecture | University of Antwerp, Belgium | 8-11 July 2025

The Ecologies of Stone Research Group hosted a special session in the 6th International Conference on Structures in Architecture. Conference proceedings may be found here. Many thanks to the presenters and co-authors:

“The Sandiness of Sand” by Frans Drewniak and Guillem Aloy Bibiloni

“Criteria for digital-parametric design tools for economical loadbearing elements from natural stone” by Tim Mahn and Mattias Beckh

“Reimagining hyperbolic paraboloid umbrellas in stone blockwork” by Richard Harpin and Zoe Nicholls

“One-Thousand Years or More: Re-Using Stones from the Thames River Wall” by Oliver Wilton and Matthew Barnett Howland

“Forgotten Resource, Untapped Potential – Rediscovering Swiss Natural Stone as a Load-Bearing Building Material” by Nelly Pilz, Franziska Singer and Elli Mosayebi

Session Theme: Structural Stone in Architecture

Beginning in the early twentieth century, structural stone was progressively replaced by carbon-intensive materials such as steel and reinforced concrete. Today, natural stone continues to be quarried in large quantities, but primarily as an export economy for building facades, flooring and other surface uses. However, architects and engineers around the world have begun experimenting again with structural stone architecture, often citing the environmental advantages: nearly half the embodied energy and one-fourth the carbon footprint of reinforced concrete, the ability to be easily disassembled and reused in perpetuity, and its capacity to support biodiversity. Architectural structures in an unprocessed, natural material such as stone are a key step toward the decarbonizing of buildings, where buildings themselves are made from the earth; thus acting in greater concert with geological and ecological cycles.

This special session explores the state-of-the-art within structural stone applications in architecture, with a focus on connecting outward toward the broader impacts and the ecology of stone material flows. Through the sub-themes – post-tensioning and assemblage, low processing, re-use and circularity, and digital steretomy – it engages a wide range of practitioners and academics across in architecture, engineering and fabrication.