Everyone likes the aesthetics of stone but developers are looking for easy ways of using it that don’t compromise the critical path of the project. NSS looks at some of the ways the industry is satisfying that requirement.

You could argue that all stone is manufactured off site because not much ends up on site that has not first been on the banker, the profiler or the CNC workcentre. Normally, though, it will then go to site to be hand set. But, increasingly, developers and architects are looking for the off-site manufacture of complete walls, or at least large sections of them, that can be delivered to site and simply hung on to the frame of the building.

Pre-cast concrete panels have been available for many years, with or without a stone facing, but they suffer from some of the same perceived drawbacks as using stone – namely, bulk and weight.

In traditional build with load-bearing masonry bulk and weight are an advantage. In a modern building where the stone is no more than a decorative outer skin they aren’t because they mean the foundations and the frame have to be hefty enough to accommodate that weight, adding to the cost of the development.

If the outer skin can be light weight and simply and quickly hung on to a frame on the outside of the building, possibly even without scaffolding and without being part of the critical path of the development, you have a happy developer.

It is not the solution for all construction because there are still plenty of designers who have chosen stone for its solidity and want the bulk for the highlights and shadows that can be created with it. But there are also plenty of designers who want to use rainscreens and curtain walling without depriving themselves of the beauty of the infinite variety that only natural stone can deliver.

That is the challenge the stone industry has faced and in the series of articles that follow, headed 'Off-site manufacture', NSS presents some of the solutions that it has on offer.