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Type
Webinar

The sustainability of structural stone

Event organised by ICE

Date
08 April 2025
Time
17:30 - 18:30 BST (GMT+1)
Location
Online

This event has now ended

Overview

In light of the climate crisis the materials that make up our built environment need to prove their worth.

Stone has serious sustainability credentials with the ability to reduce a project’s embodied carbon by 90% compared to steel or concrete frames.

In this talk, Pierre Bidaud will discuss 15 Clerkenwell Close, a new London landmark. The building has been described as a "love letter to structural stone" with its limestone façade and fallen Ionic columns where the fossilised coral, ammonite shells, quartz pockets and seams of the material remain. 

Pierre will broaden the discussion about stone to acknowledge past architectural achievements and introduce a new generation of architects pushing the boundaries of what is possible with a material that combines practicality and beauty.

The session will journey through the last 100 years of stone architecture, making the case for a healthier architecture in stone, allying the latest engineering development and low-tech systems.

Speaker

Pierre Bidaud

Pierre Bidaud

The Stonemasonry Company

creative director

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Pierre Bidaud

Pierre Bidaud has been a stonemason for 30 years. After his Tour de France, he left for England in 1998, working mainly in restoration, he developed an interest in design and contemporary architecture and in 2005 began to work on stone projects.


A meeting with a structural engineer in 2009, reinforced his belief in his materials as a structural element in contemporary buildings. He embarked since 2011 on the research and development of a new method of mineral construction, mixing with steel, other high-performance resins, creating an “Augmented stone”
Pierre believes that the survival of the profession depends on re-establishing communications between professional men and women, engineers and architects.

It is most important that each sector understand, question the capacities, limits, desires of each other to build more honestly and solidly. For him, dimensional stone have an even more relevant place in modern construction, with much lower carbon footprint than concrete, low water mobilisation and new off site prefabrication solutions.

For 12 years he has worked at the Stonemasonry Company with his team of dedicated stonemason and engineers, designing, developing new stone structures using techniques such as pretensioning, with discreet steel reinforcement, allowing columns and beams structures to be concrete free while still being  loadbearing.
For Pierre, even more now, the stonemason, with his knowledge, his material, need to become again a protagonist, a leader, and not a simple actor in modern construction. It is important that the stonemason finds its place as designer, consultant and developer of stone solution for contemporary architecture.