• Client: Building Centre
• Curators: Groupwork, The Stonemasonry Company and Webb Yates
• Photography: Chris Jackson
• Completion: 2020

The New Stone Age exhibition celebrates the sustainability, practicality and inherent beauty of stone.

In the light of the climate crisis the materials that make up our built environment need more than ever to prove their worth. Stone has serious sustainability credentials; with the ability to reduce a project’s embodied carbon by an incredible 90 per cent compared to typical steel or concrete frames.

The Building Centre’s exhibition The New Stone Age is a celebration of structural stone; of its potential and beauty as well as its inherent sustainability. Curated by Amin Taha of Groupwork, Steve Webb of Webb Yates and Pierre Bidaud from The Stonemasonry Company Ltd, the exhibition surveys the contemporary use of structural stone. The curators came together as architect, engineer and craftsman to make 15 Clerkenwell Close – 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. The building is widely recognised as a new London landmark.

The exhibition provided an opportunity to broaden the discussion of 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 exhibition features the work of a range of eminent international designers and the associated events programme will explore the challenges and opportunities of designing in stone.

The New Stone Age is an exhibition and associated public programme curated by the Building Centre exhibitions team with Amin Taha + Groupwork, Steve Webb and Pierre Bidaud. Supported by the Built Environment Trust.