Hutton Stone showcases its strengths as arch design unveiled at Clerkenwell Design Week in London

It teamed up with Albion Stone to supply materials for an ambitious pavilion in London for Clerkenwell Design Week.

They commissioned architecture practice Hawkins\Brown and engineering consultancy Webb Yates to design an installation that would demonstrate the strength, versatility and beauty of stone bricks.

Brick from a Stone: Arch Revival consists of a striking pair of freestanding, vaulted hyperbolic arches that are four metres tall.

Hawkins\Brown designed the two arches to sit together as one sculptural pavilion, creating a dialogue between the two arches through form and texture.

Each arch is elegantly crafted from a single layer of stone bricks, measuring only 102mm thick, demonstrating the material’s versatility as a load-bearing architectural product.

The arches also showcase the variety of sizes and shapes of stone bricks, including T-shaped brick ‘specials’ that both Albion Stone and Hutton Stone can produce thanks to their investment in state-of-the-art machinery.

The stone brick specials were one of the winners of the inaugural Clerkenwell Design Week Product Awards.

One arch is built from sandstone bricks in various hues from Hutton Stone’s quarries, predominantly pale buff Darney Heritage sandstone from Northumberland which is reminiscent of the traditional London brick stock.

The other arch is made from Heritage Portland Stone bricks from Albion Stone’s mine in Dorset.

Each arch includes 702 stone bricks. All these bricks are made from ‘unloved stone’ – essentially blocks that have already been quarried and removed from the ground but have not been selected for projects due to a mix of geological characteristics.

“We associate stone with robust and weighty constructions, but by incorporating catenary, load-bearing arches similar to those that Gaudi included in the Sagrada Familia, we designed a structure made up of incredibly thin building blocks. These bricks reveal the strength inherent in the material itself," explains Roger Hawkins, founding partner of Hawkins\Brown.

Brick from a Stone: Arch Revival has been installed between two iconic red London telephone boxes on Clerkenwell Green.

There are plans to install the arches, bench and tables permanently at the London Cancer Hub in Sutton and will form part of the London Festival of Architecture in June.