Stone Demonstrator
A full-scale prototype built from pre-tensioned stone that challenges how modern buildings are made. Standing three storeys tall at Empress Place, the Stone Demonstrator tests stone’s potential as a low-carbon structural material.
-
Client
Design Museum
-
Architect
Groupwork
-
Photography
Bas Princen
-
Stone Mason
The Stonemasonry Company
-
Main Contractor
Ernest Park
-
Partners
The Earls Court Development Company, The UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council
-
Completion
2025
A full-scale prototype built from pre-tensioned stone that challenges how modern buildings are made. Standing three storeys tall at Empress Place, the Stone Demonstrator tests stone’s potential as a low-carbon structural material.
The public installation, designed with Groupwork, stands on the Earls Court development site in west London and shows how pre-tensioned stone could replace steel and concrete as a primary structural material. Funded by Future Observatory and the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project serves as a research tool and a statement of intent for more sustainable construction.
Nearly 40% of global carbon emissions come from the built environment, with around 11% from the construction of new buildings. Natural stone offers a route to cut this dramatically. Compared with a conventional reinforced concrete frame, the Stone Demonstrator reduces embodied carbon by about 70%, and by 90% when compared with steel.
The open-air structure rises three storeys, measuring 6.5 by 6.5 metres. It’s built from stone blocks connected by steel tendons and compressed to form pre-tensioned beams and columns. Floorplates combine pre-tensioned stone slabs with timber joists, while the roof is made from dowel-laminated timber. The stone brick façade is self-supporting and uses blocks with around 90% lower carbon emissions than standard fired clay bricks.
An equivalent frame in steel with a brick façade would produce roughly 40,000 kilograms of CO₂, and one in reinforced concrete about 32,000 kilograms. The Stone Demonstrator generates around 3,000 kilograms, a reduction of more than 90%. The frame’s modular components are prefabricated, reducing on-site time, and can be dismantled and reused.
The Stone Demonstrator sits within a wider push by Future Observatory and the AHRC to support sustainable design research, funding more than a hundred projects to date. The project runs alongside research led by Professor Wendel Sebastian at UCL, developing a practical design guide for stone structures. This work aims to make stone construction easier to adopt and lays the groundwork for future building codes.
The Earls Court site, one of central London’s major regeneration areas, will become a new mixed-use neighbourhood of housing, workspaces and cultural venues. Its proximity to the Design Museum makes it an ideal setting to demonstrate the potential of low-carbon stone structures and to engage the wider construction industry.
This structural system has been developed for buildings up to 80 storeys in seismic regions of the Mediterranean, 30 storeys at Canary Wharf, and 35 storeys for a residential scheme in Bristol. The self-supporting stone façades, built to standard brick dimensions, can stand six storeys without loading the structural frame, needing only light restraint from wind posts. In taller buildings, the approach adapts, combining timber superstructures with stone or metal framing to meet fire and safety regulations.
With thanks to the project partners and suppliers:
Hutton Stone
Albion Stone
Bamberger Natursteinwerk Hermann Graser
Arup
Ryker Structures
Bishop Facades
IQ Wood
Brachot
Carrière de Luget
Franken-Schotter
Lundhs
SigmaRoc
Rossmore Contracts
More