Back to the Stone Age

Assembled by hand, the construction process is fast, clean, requires no temporary formwork, and is completely demountable. The prototypical stone slab was developed as a low carbon alternative to a typical reinforced concrete slab, and as a construction methodology to deliver circular economy design solutions.

Unlike vaulted stone structures that work by ensuring the stone is working only in compression, or post-tensioned stone that utilises steel tendons to work in tension in concert with stone in compression, the stone tile floor is both perfectly level and includes no steel reinforcement. This is achieved by clipping very thin stone tiles together at their corners and holding the structure along all four sides, allowing 3m to be spanned with just 40mm depth – less than half the thickness that would be required by a reinforced concrete slab doing the same job. Compared with reinforced concrete, the stone tile floor is less than half the embodied energy and less than a quarter of the embodied carbon.