Masonry Magazine March 1981 Page. 16
For Aesthetic and Practical Reasons
STONE BUILDINGS MAKE A COMEBACK
IN AMERICAN CITIES
Two decades ago, when architects and builders were busy turning out structures with glass or lightweight metal/plastic "skins," the notion that stone buildings could be the wave of the future would have been rejected out of hand.
After all, though stone is the oldest of man's building materials and played an important role in construction until the 1930s, trends since the Great Depression were against heavy, dense materials such as marble, granite, sandstone, slate and limestone, and favorable for lightweight, "slick" materials such as glass, aluminum and plastic.
But it's happened-stone is making a big comeback in the 1980s for reasons that are both practical and aesthetic. The best place to see the stone revival is in New York City where architectural trends develop that set the pace for cities throughout the nation. There, three of the most prestigious corporations in the world-IBM, AT&T and Phillip Morris are constructing new headquarters buildings. All three new skyscrapers, each designed by one of America's leading architects, are clad in granite.
The IBM Building, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, FAIA: the Phillip Morris Building, designed by Ulrich Franzen, FAIA, and the AT&T Building, designed by Phillip Johnson, FAIA-taken together will serve as a dramatic manifestation on the mid-Manhattan skyline of the return to stone.
And, if architectural history, which dictates that what happens in New York City will later be duplicated or echoed in cities and towns throughout America, repeats itself, those three buildings will serve as a point of departure for stone buildings, offices, schools, city halls, libraries and museums that will be constructed elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s.
Why is stone on the way back? According to the International Masonry Institute, market promotion arm of the
The craftsmanship of stonemasons is apparent in the sculpture-like wall beside the escalators in the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Mason Contractors Association of America and the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen whose members provide the managerial and craft skills that go into stone structures, the reasons are multiple.
One reason, says IMI, is economic: the economics of building have changed so much in the past 20 years that stone in many instances is now competitive with more prosaic building materials such as precast and poured-in-place concrete. Under these new conditions, stone is no longer an expensive luxury, rather it is a practical answer for the architect, builder and owner.
Another reason has to do with new energy conservation considerations. In comparison with glass and other lightweight materials, masonry materials such as stone, brick and concrete block afford significant and substantial energy savings.
But perhaps the most interesting reasons for the revival of stone are aesthetic, according to IMI. For one thing, architects themselves began in the late 1960s to tire of the so-called "international style" of architecture, which stressed the use of materials that were lightweight, smooth and associated with industrial processes.
As the alternative, they began to turn to masonry which gave them buildings with color, texture and weight. It is significant that the architects of the IBM, AT&T and Phillip Morris buildings all have won the Louis Sullivan Award for Architecture sponsored by the Bricklayers' In-continued on page 23