STONE: NEW TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN.

Stone has influenced architecture throughout history and continues to be a source of inspiration for its qualities of color and variation and its image of mass, permanence, and monumental scale. Its recent popularity can be attributed to more permissive and experimental design attitudes and to the availability of innovative construction techniques that enable stone to be cut and fabricated in ways that would not have been possible even 10 years ago. As a result, stone can be expressed in a variety of ways: as a traditional, monolithic, loadbearing material; as a conventionally anchored thick veneer, or as a thin-veneered stick or panel system. More economical, and faster to erect than conventionally anchored stone. In the following article, five innovative system types are described in terms of their technological and esthetic implications.