For Lundhs, this conversation is closely connected to our sustainability focus and our role as a member of The Stone Collective, an initiative established in the UK to help reintroduce stone as a modern structural building material.
From material heritage to future building practice
Natural stone has been used in architecture for centuries. Today, renewed interest in its structural potential is opening new conversations across architecture, engineering, quarrying and fabrication.
These conversations are central to The New Stone Age. The seminar brings together key voices from the UK, exploring how existing material knowledge can be applied in new ways, and how natural stone can contribute to buildings that are designed with greater care, durability and awareness of material origin.
GROUPWORK, the London-based architecture and design studio established by Amin Taha, will present their approach to architecture, material strategy and structural stone. The studio is known for combining a poetic architectural sensibility with rigorous research into low-carbon and cost-efficient materials. Their work has received international recognition, including RIBA National Awards, and has twice been shortlisted for both the RIBA Stirling Prize and the EUmies Award.
The lecture will be given by Blanka Ciborowska and Aaron Naish. Blanka is currently working on the practice’s new office on Regent’s Canal in London — a six-storey building in structural stone and mass timber, with the ambition of achieving negative embodied and operational carbon. Aaron recently completed the Stone Demonstrator in London with Webb Yates and The Stonemasonry Company, a pre-tensioned stone and timber prototype demonstrating low and negative carbon alternatives to concrete, steel and fired brick.
Steve Webb, co-founder of Webb Yates Engineers, will bring an engineering perspective to the discussion. Since founding the practice with Andy Yates in 2005, Steve has overseen a number of prestigious and award-winning projects, including several Stirling Prize-shortlisted buildings. His work has helped challenge conventional assumptions around structural design, with a strong focus on innovation, sustainability and the use of non-conventional materials such as stone and timber.
Pierre Bidaud, Creative Director at The Stonemasonry Company, will contribute from the perspective of craft, fabrication and industry development. With a background in heritage stonemasonry, Pierre has spent two decades advocating for the use of stone in contemporary construction. His work focuses on stone staircases, load-bearing structures and post-tensioning elements, with a clear ambition to reposition stone as a practical and scalable building material — not a luxury.
Together, GROUPWORK, Webb Yates Engineers and Pierre Bidaud represent different but closely connected parts of the same shift: from design and engineering to fabrication and delivery. Their work shows how structural stone can move from idea and prototype to real building practice.
Finchley Road: a built example of The New Stone Age
A key reference for the seminar is the Finchley Road project in north London, where GROUPWORK, Webb Yates Engineers and expertise from the structural stone community have come together in a pioneering built project.
The development uses a structural exoskeleton made from Larvikite from Lundhs, with more than 400 stone beams and columns forming part of the building’s load-bearing frame. Rather than treating stone as cladding or decoration, Finchley Road places the material at the centre of both the engineering concept and the architectural expression of the building.
For Lundhs, the project is an important example of how Larvikite can perform structurally at building scale. It demonstrates the potential of natural stone when material knowledge, engineering, quarrying, fabrication and logistics are integrated from an early stage. It also reflects the wider ambition of The Stone Collective: to support the reintroduction of stone as a modern, low-carbon structural building material through research, collaboration and real-world projects.
