Over the past twelve months, Stone Federation has been partnering with a team of architects and structural engineers from Allies & Morrison, Sheppard Robson and Webb Yates to explore the opportunities and barriers to UK stone being more widely used as part of the broader efforts to decarbonise the built environment.
Launched in 2022, RIBA’s Scott Brownrigg Award for Sustainable Development offers £10,000 to individuals or teams interested in developing research projects or practical work in architecture-related topics associated with one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Global Compact.
The work challenges the idea of stone as a purely heritage or decorative material and looks at how regionally sourced UK stone can be used in loadbearing and hybrid applications with clear whole-life carbon benefits. Through quarry visits, interviews, and technical analysis, the research shows that the main barriers to wider use are systemic rather than technical, from fragmented supply chains to late-stage material decisions.
The research has been translated into a public online platform, bringing together a sustainable sourcing guide, an interactive quarry map, an embodied carbon calculator, and a short documentary capturing voices from across the UK stone industry.
This research and the resources created are a significant opportunity for the stone industry’s carbon-saving potential to be put in the spotlight. The hope is that the research will help empower the UK stone sector to grow and develop even further.
You can view the published research at ukstone.co.uk.
