TYPE Material Research & Pavilion
DATE 2018
LOCATION Madison, WI.
COLLABORATOR Quarra Stone Company
DESIGN LEAD
David Costanza
Draped Stone uses stone in tension through fiber reinforcement, producing a hanging marble canopy. The form of the canopy is derived from a hanging mesh simulation that produces a catenary draped surface. Rather than a traditional tensile structure, where the surface is stretched between two boundary conditions, resulting in an anticlastic surface, the hanging canopy utilizes the weight of the stone to put the fiber reinforcement into tension, allowing for a synclastic tensile structure.
Each of the units is conceived of as a sandwich panel. The fiberglass reinforcement is located in the middle of two doubly curved, machined, marble blanks. Because the marble was reinforced, the canopy was constructed entirely from scrap marble. Many marble blocks which otherwise could not be used because of fracture lines and other natural deficiencies, could now be reinforced with fiberglass and used in a structural capacity. The reinforced hanging canopy, which reads as precise, delicate, and thin, made from white marble and digitally produced, is held up by a dark grey granite wall, which is massive and rough, exposing the texture derived from the quarrying process.