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Massive precut stone

15 Clerkenwell Close in London uses a massive-precut stone exoskeleton.
The first load-bearing stone skyscraper, 2 Rue Saint-Laurent, a 16-storey apartment building in Marseille, built from massive-precut stone in 1948.
Part of a residential complex constructed using the massive precut stone method.
Apartment buildings built from massive-precut stone.

Massive-precut stone is a modern stonemasonry method of building with load-bearing stone.[1] Precut stone is a DFMA construction method that uses large machine-cut dimension stone blocks with precisely defined dimensions to rapidly assemble buildings in which stone is used as a major or the sole load-bearing material.

A key technique of massive-precut stone ("MP stone") is to specify precut stone to precise dimensions that match the architect's plan for rapid construction, typically using a crane.[1] The blocks may be numbered so that the masons can follow the plan procedurally. The use of massive stone blocks has several benefits, listed below.

Massive-precut stone construction was originally developed by Fernand Pouillon in postwar period who referred to the method as "pierre de taille" or "pré-taille" stone. It became possible through innovations by Pouillon and Paul Marcerou, a masonry engineer at a quarry in Fontvieille, to adapt high-precision saws from the timber industry to quarrying and stone sawing.[2]

Massive-precut stone is also known as "prefabricated stone", "pre-sized stone", "megalithic" construction, "massive stone", or simply "mass stone". However these terms have various namespace conflicts with other stonemasonry techniques like synthetic stone, cosmetic (non-loadbearing) precut stone, and/or older methods of massive handworked stonemasonry. MP stone has a close affiliation with tensioned stone as compatible methods of modern load-bearing stonemasonry.[3] Similarly, massive-precut stone (aka mass stone) has a connection to mass timber as allied low-carbon construction methods using traditional structural materials in a new context.

Since 1948, MP stone buildings have been constructed in France, Algeria, Iran,[4] Switzerland, Palestine, United Kingdom, Spain, and India. The re-adoption of MP stone inspired architecture critic Rowan Moore to speculate that "It's conceivable, indeed, that the era of concrete will prove only an interlude in the far longer history of stone."[5]

  1. ^ a b Perraudin, Gilles (2013). Constructing in massive stone today. les presses du reel. p. 64. ISBN 978-2-84066-680-6.
  2. ^ Matsubara, Kosuke (October 12, 2022). "An examination of the three districts in Algiers by Fernand Pouillon as Moorish architecture: Research on dwelling practice around the "bidonville (shantytown)" project in Algiers during the Late Colonial Period, Part 2". Japan Architectural Review. 5 (4): 458–473. doi:10.1002/2475-8876.12279. S2CID 252864125.
  3. ^ "The pros and cons of stone buildings". Financial Times. 17 June 2022.
  4. ^ "Iran". FP en ligne. Retrieved 2023-08-14.
  5. ^ Moore, Rowan (2023-08-06). "Back to the stone age: the sustainable building material we've all been waiting for…". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2023-08-14.

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