Compound stone cladding

From TTU College of Architecture

La Grotta/The Cave
Reuse of an abandoned stone quarry
Montorio, Verona, Italy, 2002-2006
Material: Nembro Stone

Our design envisions a resort for the client’s leisure time that refills the excavation of a former stone quarry. Re-modulated green zones and stone surfaces as finished exterior of the new building “skin” are going to be smoothly integrated with existing ones. The challenge was to build the east façade not from a two dimensional sheet material, but to resolve the complexity of these compound stone surfaces. This process afforded to design an optimized surface pattern model, and to limit the size of individual stones. This could only be facilitated when each of the single stones would be built in its real three dimensional form in Catia. According to our design concept, the external surface cannot take any structural functions, and the primary structural system is formed by a skeletal framework that is congruent with the shape of the external surface. In the project related research, we used the various geometry surface types for several samples of Nembro stone, and we made rough cuts and experiments in shaping the surface with various tools from smaller discs to different shaped tool bits. A mock-up as part of the project in 1:1 scale is fabricated with digital fabrication technologies.

Project facts:
Client: Private
Architects: Pongratz Perbellini Architects (Christian R. Pongratz and Maria R. Perbellini)
Project team: Eduardo Frischwasser, Paulo E. Flores Romero
Structural and Mechanical Engineer: Giuseppe Benini
Engineers (Mockup, Steel Structure development-installation): Permasteelisa Group, Treviso, Italy
Stone cladding: Fratelli Testi, Testigroup, Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella, Verona, Italy
Digital Tracing: Studio Topografico Pasqualini, Verona, Italy
Chronology: 2002-2004 (project); in progress (construction)
Dimensional data: area 1.900 m2; volume 650 m3