• Client: Royal Academy of Arts
• Engineer: Webb Yates Engineers
• Stonemasonry: The Stonemasonry Company
• Photographer: Agnese Sanvito

We’ve collaborated with The Stonemasonry Company on a new 11m post-tensioned stone beam, called Equanimity, as part of the 2022 Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition.

The 11m post-tensioned stone beam shows how structural stone can be used in place of concrete, saving massive amounts of carbon in the process. Assembled from blocks of Portland stone that had been rejected by the quarry for aesthetic blemishes, and great chunks of granite salvaged from a condemned postmodern building in the Docklands, it exploits the different properties of the two materials along the length of the beam, respectively working in tension and compression.

While we continue to believe that we can limit climate change by using low energy materials, the beam deals with today’s reality, lifting desperate people out of the flood waters. The conception of the beam was a combination of engineering design and craft knowledge. Allowing the pragmatic and the scientific to rule in the design is what has lead us to make such a rarefied and arresting object with a real prospect for the future.

Materials used for the 300 x 160 x 1100 cm stone beam: Granite, limestone, Douglas fir and steel.

Equanimity won the 2022 CDUK award for Architecture, an award which is given for best demonstrating the capacity of architecture to signal hope.

The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition is the largest open-submission art exhibition in the world, and showcases art in all forms, from prints, painting, film and photography to architectural works and sculpture. This year’s Exhibition has been curated by artist Alison Wilding, who has chosen the theme of climate in all its manifestations, and the architecture room has been curated by Níall McLaughlin and Rana Begum.

RA Summer Exhibition 2022 was open from 21 June to 21 August 2022.