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Advertising supplement provided by The Marble Institute of America

Continuing Education Use the following learning objectives to focus your study while reading this month’s ARCHITECTURAL RECORD / AIA Continuing Education article. Learning Objective: After reading this article, you will be able to: 1. gain a greater understanding of how to select natural stone. 2. learn of some of the characteristics of various natural stone building materials. 3. have a sense of how to avoid some common problems when using natural stone.

The use of natural stone has skyrocketed. Its popularity, especially for interiors, is at a record level, driven in part by technological advances in its fabrication.

“For our office, stone is a critical element in almost every design we do,” says Joshua Zinder, project manager at Princeton, N.J.-based architectural firm Michael Graves & Associates. “It’s one of the places we like to start a project.”

“The most exciting thing about the stone industry today is the increased acceptance of marble and granite by many users, for new and different as well as traditional applications,” says Vincent Migliore.

Migliore’s family interest in stone dates to 1843, and Migliore has worked all ends of the trade. Today he is a fee-based consultant and president of Empress Migliore SPA, Phillipsburg, N.J., and technical director for the Marble Institute of America. “The market has gone crazy,” he says. Stone is being used as never before.

Our Lady of Angels Monastery, Hanceville, Alabama.

“The cost of stone has come down substantially as a percentage of building costs,” Migliore says. “Its cost today is lower than it was 10 years ago.”

“Technological advances in all areas of stone production – quarrying, fabricating, and especially installing – have dramatically reduced the cost of using stone.” says Rich Booms, president of the Marble Institute of America and owner of Redford, Mich.-based Booms Stone Co.

“New, automated machinery allows us to cut stone thinner, at less cost, and more consistently,” Booms says. “The development of new anchorage systems makes installation easier, quicker, and more secure, and that, too, has driven prices downward. If we can install 30 pieces per day, instead of 15, the cost to the owner goes down by that amount.”

Contemporary cladding systems make it possible to use panels as little as 3/4-in. (2 cm) thick, with a notable reduction in the cost of stone.

Polished slabs of 2 cm-thick granite now sell for between $22 and $42 per sq. ft., depending on the color; rough 2 cm-thick slabs of marble, between $8 and $36 per sq. ft. Patterned edge material can cost from $12 (for a square edge) to $62 (for something as complex as a “reverse glacier” edge) per lineal foot.