Pierre Bidaud
The Stonemasonry Company
creative director
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.
