Nested stone pasts and futures: stone reuse prototyping at St Leonard’s Hill

This paper asks how digital workflows can help enable stone reuse that can give a low-carbon, resource efficient form of construction which carries forward elements of material culture. The potential is considered for this process to inform and enable an evolved architectural language and aesthetic of structural stone that relates to the provenance of the stones used. The focus of the paper is on the development of a workflow, design and production of a prototype structural stone trabeated portal cut from building stone from an historic demolished house at St Leonard’s Hill, Berkshire. The stereotomy of the historic stones is nested from the quarried blocks that they were originally cut from, and the stereotomy of the prototype portal blocks is the next step in this sequence of nested stone (re)cutting and (re)use. In this way, as the stones cycle through the built environment, all possible future stereotomy is nested within their current forms, and as these forms diminish, so the horizon of all possible future forms narrows. This is something considered in the nesting and cutting of the stones for the prototype, with some stone faces freshly cut and some left uncut, carrying forward their past form and character. This can be understood as fitting within the broad tradition of spolia with, in this case, both resource efficiency and cultural heritage being considered in the design of the stone recutting and reuse.