Ecologies of Stone - session chair

Massive stone building culture can be found in practically any epoch before the 20th century. Ever since Vitruvius listed various stone qualities from in and around Rome, the material has been written into the world history of architecture: from technological to representational; from aesthetic to cultural. The practical barriers to extraction, along with pre-modern and indigeonous notions of geology, meant that stone architecture often had deep connections to the landscape. This symbiotic relationship between geology, landscape and architecture could be read in terms of ecological relations, where human and non-human exist in a non-exploitative and situated manner. In the Inca quarries in the Andes highlands a sacred influence existed between the site, the extracted stone, and the architecture. On the Balearic islands, marès sandstone was once extracted from more than 1500 small quarries, each a hyper-localized building culture of distinct stone type, color and texture. Similar associations could be investigated through cases from around the world, from the sandstone of the Ankor monuments, to the omni-present melekeh limestone of Jerusalem, to the Tuscan pietra serena of 15th century Florence.

In a moment when architecture confronts its relation to material extraction, architectural historiography must re-consider how buildings responded to the normally overlooked landscapes of extraction. Recent research outside of architectural history has shifted focus to the extraction landscape. Notions such as ‘quarryscape’ and ‘geo-heritage’ include perspectives of the carved landscape from the geological, ethnographic and archeological point of view. This expanded understanding of stone building culture opens the door for new discoveries between architecture, landscape, geology, and environmental history. Following the principles of interconnectedness and ecological thought, there is an opportunity today to investigate how stone building culture developed within a network of relations that include the act of extraction.

This session invites cases examining stone building culture as critically pursued in connection with stone extraction practices, landscapes and cultures. Examples of such interconnectedness might include: the relations between architecture and geology, stone building techniques and local ecology, or the role of social or labor relations in the quarry to architecture. Papers could pursue topics such as: the reclaimation of quarry sites, the cultural identity of an extracted landscape, buildings themselves as quarries, or the imaginaries of localized plant life within a stone building culture. In short, the session seeks cases from any period or region of massive stone in architecture, not only as a building material, but one that is deeply embededded in a network of relations leading eventually back to the quarry. Non-western and indigeonous cases are particularly welcome.