Contemporary massive stone envelopes for residential buildings: expressive potentialities, technical features and environmental benefits

For centuries natural stone has been employed in residential buildings, thus shaping the features of the architectural heritage of many European historical urban centres and characterizing rural areas. Nowadays, even if thin stone cladding panels are the most common building solution, massive stone is gaining a renewed importance for residential types. In fact, traditional and innovative building techniques such as masonry and gabions are being promoted by many designers in new dwellings because of their expressive and performance potentialities. Their design researches show that contemporary techniques are able to express local identity and to guarantee the integration of new constructions in peculiar urban or natural contexts, avoiding historicist approaches. Such techniques reflect the appearance of traditional stone buildings and of retaining walls that terrace and characterize natural landscape, but refer also to current architectural language because stone is coupled with modern materials such as concrete, steel and glass. The contrasting qualities of these materials used for the load-bearing structures or for the large openings of the buildings, contribute to define the innovative expressive character of contemporary residential stone envelopes. Under the technical point of view, contemporary envelopes are able to go beyond energy performance weaknesses of traditional stone architectures because they are composed by several layers with different functions: gabion elements and stone masonry walls are used in combination with internal brick masonry walls, insulation layers and other materials in order to enhance the thermal-energy performance of the building. The environmental sustainability of contemporary solutions is related also to their fabrication process: gabion and stone masonry walls, in fact, can be realized reusing or recycling waste produced in stone quarrying and processing plants or during the demolition of existing constructions, limiting disposal problems and avoiding the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. This article describes through the analysis of Italian and European case studies, the features of contemporary building techniques used to realize massive stone envelopes of single-family or multifamily residential buildings in order to underline their expressive and performance potentialities. It analyses the design strategies, the technical solutions and the materials adopted in the selected architectures. Moreover, it highlights the environmental benefits of massive stone envelopes connected to their thermal-energy performance and to the use of stone waste.