education
Clear tolerances are essential to accurate, safe stonework. Updated guidance brings dimension stone standards into one place, helping fabricators, installers, and designers better understand acceptable variation and resolve common quality-control issues.
Natural stone cladding relies on carefully engineered anchorage systems to withstand gravity, wind, and seismic forces. Understanding load paths, anchor types, and collaboration between specialists is essential for safe, durable exterior stone installations.
Friction testing is critical to evaluating the safety of natural stone walking surfaces. With older methods withdrawn, ANSI A326.3 offers a reliable standard for measuring traction, helping specifiers reduce liability and ensure safer, better-performing flooring.
Friction testing is critical to evaluating the safety of natural stone walking surfaces. With older methods withdrawn, ANSI A326.3 offers a reliable standard for measuring traction, helping specifiers reduce liability and ensure safer, better-performing flooring.
Natural stone’s longevity depends on more than material alone. From geology and environment to standards and installation, each factor influences performance. When properly selected and installed, stone paving can deliver lasting durability with minimal maintenance.
Natural stone outshines man-made alternatives with unmatched beauty, strength, and sustainability. From timeless durability to eco-friendly benefits and modern innovations, stone offers authenticity and enduring value, making it the ultimate choice for design.
Choosing natural stone over manmade materials can help lower a project’s embodied carbon. This is showcased in three examples featuring cladding, flooring, and countertops. We also outline the importance of third-party verified resources like Life Cycle Analyses, the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard, and product labels such as Environmental Product Declarations.
The Natural Stone Sustainability Standard has redefined the narrative around natural stone extraction, where sustainability and longevity harmonize with industry needs. In this article, we also explore several examples of creative quarry reclamation that showcase adaptive reuse. Gain a better understanding of the ecological land impacts of natural stone quarrying.
Terrazzo is a durable, low maintenance material. Terrazzo has a long history, informed in part by the ancient mosaics of Egypt that were made of small or irregular pieces of stone, glass, or ceramic.
Here are five things to know when you decide on using natural stone for your home improvement project, to help ensure product satisfaction and an overall smooth experience. More education helps ease the process of finding the best fit for their style, taste, and budgets, and to suit their individual project needs.
While design trends come and go, natural stone remains a timeless and flexible option for many exterior applications including cladding, paving, and hardscapes. It is important to know how the material chosen for an exterior project will perform under a variety of circumstances, conditions, and uses.
From an overall sustainability perspective, natural stone has a lower environmental footprint than precast concrete. This is due to the minimal resources used to quarry, fabricate, finish, and transport natural stone.
Sintered surface is sometimes marketed as sustainable because it contains natural materials. But as you will see from the manufacturing process described below, the use of an energy intensive manufacturing process gives sintered surface a much larger environmental footprint than natural stone.
Porcelain is produced to emulate the beauty and veining of marble. But as you will see, the use of many materials and additives and the energy intensive processes involved in its manufacturing create a much larger environmental footprint for porcelain than natural stone.
Engineered quartz is sometimes marketed as a sustainable, natural material because of the quartz in it. However, as the process of manufacturing engineered quartz depicted demonstrates, that is not the case.
Natural stone adds value to any project through its sustainability properties. Stone—a single-ingredient product — is one of the most sustainable building materials that can be specified.
Learn about the career of a successful stone sculptor, Chris Miller. He enjoys the entire process from design and planning to the physicality of working with natural stone.
In a world of bytes and bites, the next generation of artisans is still studying with mallets and chisels and doing its part to carry over an ancient trade to another century.
The sparkly aesthetic comes from mica minerals, which are nature’s glitter.
Architects and designers can find all they need to know on this resource page from Natural Stone Institute.