Kengo Kuma: a LAB for Materials – Stone
”Stone was not my material of choice for long time because it is heavy, solid and cold,” says Kengo Kuma. He especially loathed the idea of attaching thinly sliced pieces of stone to the surface of the concrete to give the appearance of real stone, which has been a prevalent technique since the 20th century for the sake of efficiency.
But Antoni Gaudi’s The Church of Colònia Güell changed his mind. Gaudi used raw polygonal basalt pieces as structural pillars. Produced at a nearby quarry, following to his policy to leverage locally produced materials, the pillars stood naturally and forcefully as though they were living trees full of vigor. Kuma was impressed by the way Gaudi let the stones behave at the Colònia Güell.
Ever since, he has been attempting to use stone as a whole block, not as sliced pieces just to cover the concrete surface. I came to realize, says Kuma, that stone was like a living organism. It had an internal structure like trees, had fiber-like elements that ran in a certain direction, and also had a straight or flat grain.
Kuma suggests that we can consider stone as a “dead” organism that is on the same spectrum as other organic elements. Look at trees, he says; they are half dead because they grow by surrounding their own dead cells. Stone is just a bit further down the spectrum. At the end of the day, architecture is something that sits in between life and death, and we can blur its boundaries by embracing both.
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