Foreword — the 'Stone in Architecture' competition
After M. Iravanian won the international urban-landscaping contest 'Stone in Architecture' first prize, Kamran Afshar Naderi participated in the prize-awarding ceremony representing Me'mar Nashr Institute. Having visited the industries and mines in the region, he prepared, for Me'mar, a report on stone extraction, cutting, shaping and polishing processes, mentioning the delicacies involved in stone working. The report is followed by interviews with two architects and one stone worker on the problems of stone production in Iran.
In the Khordad of this year, the stone-production industries and the related machine-makers based in Italy's marble city, Carrara, in cooperation with Italy's National Institute for Foreign Trade (the Italian Chamber of Commerce, ICE), held — as every year — an international competition to choose the best architectural works in stone. The Italian ambassador to Iran, Riccardo Sessa, and the head of the trade-development section of the embassy, Giovanni Pacitti, proposed that Iranian architects also enter the competition. With the cooperation of Memar Nashr Institute, a group of selected Iranian architects whose work in stone is significant entered, and Mehrdad Iravanian — a young, creative architect whose work has been introduced several times in Memar — won the first prize for urban landscaping. I, too, was invited as the representative of Memar Nashr to travel with the prize-winner to Italy and attend the ceremony, held on the tenth of Khordad in Carrara.
Three levels of architectural quality
In today's architecture we mostly chase built works, projects and theories, while in everyday professional practice we deal mostly with the building site, technology, materials, and the daily routines of the office. The point is that architectural quality cannot be separated from the process by which it comes about; like any other product, a building is the result of the use of materials, of technology, and of its production process. Our knowledge of the world's important architectural ideas and projects is plentiful, but our understanding of the production process of those works — from design to execution — is small.
Three principal factors stand out in the shaping of good architecture: first, clients, the technical-financial management of the project, and in general what Nicola Sinopoli calls in his book the 'invisible'; second, the running of the office and the daily work of architecture — from contract and fee calculation to working drawings; third, the building's production process from raw materials to the last detail. The subject of this article is the third.
Mario Botta's chapel and Carrara stone
On the Friday of the tenth of Khordad, after the ceremony, with a group that included Mario Botta — winner of the interior-architecture prize, Marco Davini — supervising engineer, and Giuliano Vangi — the well-known Italian sculptor — we visited a small site near Carrara. The visit was to a small chapel set into the mountain, designed by Mario Botta with a sculpture by Vangi. The chapel was, in fact, a stone iwan about 12 metres high, with a sculpture set deep within. The building was built of grey-coloured marble pieces 10 cm thick and small in size (around 30 × 50 cm). Each stone had a particular cut, and was tied to the concrete wall with INOX (the finest stainless steel) clips. The execution was accurate to the millimetre, and to the eye there was no flaw of execution. The stones were uniform, with edges so flawless and so sharp that they cut the hand. The project's overall form was very simple, and the stone was a marble of the kind which, on the Iranian market, is counted among the lower-grade stones. The aesthetic of this building owed itself to the manner of working the stone in the workshop.
Comparison with the Iranian situation
The comparison with the Iranian situation was unavoidable for me. There, a low-value, ordinary stone is taken from the mountain, and at every stage some value is added to it, until in the end it appears as a distinguished work in the user's hand. In Iran, by contrast, the value of the raw material — even of the best kind — is, from the moment of extraction, gradually reduced step by step until in the end it is delivered to the user as a sub-grade material.
Non-technical extraction; carelessness in sorting; sub-standard cutting that makes maintenance and use of the stone hard; non-principled transport that damages the stones; wrong fixing that not only fails to bring out the value of the stone's natural form but in many cases even displays its loose-end details and faults; and, finally, the absence of finishing products such as resins and oils which make final polishing and maintenance of the stone possible — all these together turn Iran's stone, which is among the world's best in quality, into a low-value, often ugly, cladding.
The Campolonghi factory and world architecture
On one of the days of the trip, we visited one of the most important Italian stone industries, Campolonghi, with branches in several other countries. In its workshops, many of the world's most important works of architecture take shape. Architects such as Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, SOM, I. M. Pei, César Pelli and Ricardo Bofill commission work from this workshop. During the visit we saw, at first hand, the work being done on the stones for the structure of Renzo Piano's Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church, and the large stone elements of Norman Foster's work. The first concerned the building of the largest stone arches in history (a span of about 50 m), and the second the production of several pieces of granite stone, exactly identical, of about 1.5 × 4 m and around 20 cm thick.
The Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church — Renzo Piano
About twelve years ago, when I was working in Piano's office, the Padre Pio project was at the design stage, and every day various test models of its stone arches were prepared. Piano's aim was to create a modern, high-tech structure using a traditional material and new technology. I remember that, at that time, the structural engineers were proposing to Piano that he abandon the stone arch and design one in concrete; they would guarantee that the visible result of such an arch would be no different from a true stone arch — built up from wedge-shaped pieces of stone, which is self-stable. They emphasised that the project area was earthquake-prone, and that the stone arch — beyond the fact that its technology had been forgotten — would not be stable. In the end, Arup engineers took on the challenge and produced the structural design for the arches as Piano had wished. The only difference from the traditional concept of an arch was the running of a number of steel cables to strengthen the structure against earthquake.
This building was built, and an important part of it is now finished. In the Padre Pio Sanctuary there are 21 stone arches, each about 50 metres long and 16 metres high, of white limestone. The structure of the building consists in all of 1,300 fifteen-faced stone pieces, each cut in a particular way, placed atop one another, and held in place only by the special geometry of the arch. The accuracy required was half a millimetre in cutting each piece. Before the project began, specialists from Piano's office and Campolonghi visited the relevant quarries to ensure that enough stone of uniform tone and grain was available for the project. During extraction, sufficient care was taken so that the large stone pieces were free of flaws, and the same care was taken in the bulk transport. The blocks were subjected to various tests, including ultrasonic, to verify that they were sound and crack-free; at this stage a great deal of stone was set aside. Movement of the stone within the factory, its handling, cutting and working, was carried out using numerically-controlled milling machines with large diamond discs capable of cutting to a depth of 700 mm.
Two important features distinguish the Campolonghi company. One is the existence of expert specialists and engineers who help the architect's office from extraction through to detail design; the other is the possibility of executing parts of the referred-to projects at full scale within the factory yard. During the visit I came across two 1:1 mock-ups of about 10 × 10 m, built within the factory grounds for the close study of details of architectural projects.
Tradition and modernity in the production process
We all remember that the discussion of tradition and modernity ran for several years in our country, and was abandoned all at once without yielding any result of note. One can say that Piano's project is an interesting instance of this challenge. Historic architectures took shape on the basis of techniques settled over the centuries, and architectural design has always been in close relation with the methods of execution and the materials of the building. The discussion of the continuity of architectural history, without entering into the technical and practical sides of production, is fruitless.
What we lack in our country is specialised centres that present materials to architects together with engineering knowledge and services. For us, engineering only calls to mind the calculating engineer; engineering in architecture has wide dimensions, of which expertise in stone work is only a part. Architecture, like any other product, changes only when its production process changes; until the production line is transformed and brought up to date, the situation will not change much. In the field of architectural technology, and especially in stone, it would be better — instead of exporting raw materials at low prices — to use better machinery, expert workers and proper organisation; in this way we will both raise the country's export value and the quality of architecture.
(News on this competition appeared in Memar no. 16.)
Postscript — 'The Story of Stone', Frank Lloyd Wright / translated by Farzaneh Taheri
(From Abadi, no. 9, summer 1372 / 1993.)
When man begins to work stone as one of his materials, the stone becomes a shapely block. The block is, in surface and form, necessarily four-square — so that one can with confidence place one block on another and lift great weight to a greater height. To such masses, made up in this way, one can let the stone show its natural face on the wall, or show the face that bears the marks of the tool that shaped it — or it may be entirely smooth; sometimes one may sand or polish it.
The identity of these walls is the very surface left from the work of the mason and his tool. The identity of the wall surface depends also on the kind of stone, the kind of mason, and the kind of architect. Probably the kind of building has its effect too. But if the work is good stonework, the nature of the stone itself will be the most important factor.
Stone is found in every kind of texture and colour. Sometimes, like marble in its pure and clean state, it reaches at last 'precious' stones, and finally jewels. But most building stones — like Caen stone — are a transparent and neutral material, like sheets of soft, fine paper from which images can be drawn, and from which a part of the surface must be cast away so that the writing of man may be inscribed and the ideology of the human race conveyed from the early times to the times of decline. Other stones can be ground until their surface shines, and so polished that at last the nature within them is visible — just as one looks into a crystal sphere. Most marble stones have such a property, including granite, in which the material itself becomes its own ornament. To carve or cut its surface, then, if not a crime, is at least to be regretted.
Stones have their own particular striking features; in China and Japan also, they were loved for these 'features'. Perhaps the people of the East, more than those of any other place, love stone for being stone — as if in stone they see the whole of being, or at least the creation of the earth in small dimensions, and study it with true attachment and gratitude. The Byzantine mosaics with their coloured stones, too, are an example of honouring these features. These mosaics produced beautiful stone works at large scale — fine stonework, good masonry.
But stone is a hard, heavy, durable material, very fitting for making mass. We can say it is a 'mass-making' material. So in the principal masses of architecture it is the most fitting and the most welcome material — higher and better.
