Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Natural Stone
Natural Stone
With its unique appearance and durability, marble provides an ideal way to add
significance and substance to a space. For example, marble from Turkey, available in a
wide selection of colors and types, can be used especially as floor and wall surfaces
applied with design using tiling and coursing geometries.
The extensive range of Turkish marble allows architects to combine different colors of
marble with unique natural veining patterns, such as Elazig Cherry or Toros Black, to
create one-of-a-kind interiors.
For outdoor settings, the more homogenous color palette of Turkish marbles such as
Anatolian Beige and Marmara Marble provides spatial and visual continuity while
allowing for variations in surface treatments (e.g., polished, honed, or flamed) to visually
define the applied volume.
One example of these design methods is the famed Hagia Sophia Byzantine church in
Istanbul built in 6th century AD. Inside, the Hagia Sophia floor and wall tiling combine
with decorative elements such as column capitals made with different marbles at
different scales, resulting in a vast spatial synthesis of space, light, and color.
Today, marble from Turkey continues these traditions of stone architecture using a
range of marbles and in combination with modern technical design capabilities,
interactive processes, and high design and engineering standards.
A T T H E A R MA G GA N S H OP IN N U R U OS MA N IY E , I S T A N B U L, T H E GE OM E T R Y OF T H E P IN WH E E L P A T T E R N S O F T H E
F L OO R I N G A R E M A T C H E D WI T H T H E V E I N S O F T H E E MP E R A D O R M A R B L E I N S H A D E S OF B R O WN A N D B E I GE .
( A R C H IT E C T : T ON E R M IM A R LI K ; IM A G E : M IR H A N B I LI R )
Travertine in architecture
Travertine from Turkey is another notable natural stone used in the history of
architecture. Like marble, travertine features veining and patterns. Because it is a softer
stone and costs less than marble, travertine also can be fabricated into unique forms
and shapes using digital fabrication tools such as CNC routers.
Travertine is suited to both the exterior and interior of buildings, as can be seen in the
remains of the Roman city of Hierapolis dating from the 2nd-3rd century AD. Located in
what is now Denizli, Turkey, the source of much of the travertine used throughout the
world, the Greco-Roman city’s streets, arcades, and agoras were all created from
travertine and still exist today.
We can see a similar approach to using Turkish travertine at the College of Media and
Communication- Northwestern University in Qatar, a contemporary building designed by
Antoine Predock Architects (APA) and built in 2017. APA explained that they used
travertine to organize a linked series of urban spaces in natural stone, similar to what
we have seen in classical examples. “The structure’s thickly textured stone walls protect
inner courtyards from the harsh desert climate,” the firm said. “The building gestures
calligraphically, creating a narrative interweaving of courtyards and open atria allowing a
spatial progression out through the building, the courtyard, and to the Gardens.”
A wide range of other natural Turkish stones is available to meet different needs for
color, physical properties, hardness, and porosity.
For example, Turkish limestone, another softer natural stone, can be carved quite
easily. This can be seen in the classical Ottoman architecture of Mimar Sinan such as
the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul from the 16 th century, which uses the local Küfeki
limestone in carved masonry features in the custom architectural order of columns and
domes.
Turkish limestone is also an affordable natural stone that allows for carved and
engraved design motifs to be explored using the digital fabrication technologies
available today.
Dolomite, a harder stone than marble, similar to granite, is also known as Marmara
White and is found in the Istanbul region. Marmara White is known for its dramatic white
color and durability, and it was used extensively in different shades of white and red in
Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman architecture and sculpture.
Finally, with Turkey’s seismic and volcanic geography, cooling lava created igneous
stones such as basalt and andesite. Extremely durable and resistant to corrosion and
pollution as an ecologically oriented natural stone, basalt and andesite are used
primarily as a pavement stone but can also be applied to façades in cold climates and
harsh urban settings.
For example, architect Nizam Kizilsencer, AIA, selected pollution-resistant andesite for
an office building in Brooklyn, mechanically applying a light composite panel of gray
andesite on an aluminum honeycomb substrate to the façade. Architect Gokhan
Avcioglu, AIA, uses a type of basalt sculpturally in new hotel projects for the cold
climate of the high plateau of the Cappadocia tourist destination in the Central Anatolia
region of Turkey.
L OC A L B A S A L T V OL C A N I C S T ON E WA S C A R V E D T O G E N E R A T E O R I GI N A L MA S ON R Y E LE ME N T S F OR T H E
C A P P A D O C I A K E P E Z H O T E L A N D R E S O R T IN T U R K E Y ’ S T OU R IS T D E S T IN A T I ON O F C A P P A D OC IA . (A R C H I T E C T &
I MA GE : G A D )
AIA does not sponsor or endorse any enterprise, whether public or private, operated for
profit. Further, no AIA officer, director, committee member, or employee, or any of its
component organizations in his or her official capacity, is permitted to approve, sponsor,
endorse, or do anything that may be deemed or construed to be an approval,
sponsorship, or endorsement of any material of construction or any method or manner
of handling, using, distributing, or dealing in any material or product.
A tent illustrates the basic elements of environmental control that are the concern of
construction. The tent creates a membrane to shed rain and snow; cold water on
the human skin absorbs body heat. The membrane reduces wind speed as well; air over
the human skin also promotes heat loss. It controls heat transfer by keeping out the hot
rays of the sun and confining heated air in cold weather. It also blocks out light and
provides visual privacy. The membrane must be supported against the forces of gravity
and wind; a structure is necessary. Membranes of hides are strong in tension (stresses
imposed by stretching forces), but poles must be added to take compression (stresses
imposed by compacting forces). Indeed, much of the history of construction is the
search for more sophisticated solutions to the same basic problems that the tent was set
out to solve. The tent has continued in use to the present. The Saudi Arabian goats’ hair
tent, the Mongolian yurt with its collapsible wooden frame and felt coverings, and
the American Indian tepee with its multiple pole supports and double membrane are
more refined and elegant descendants of the crude shelters of the early hunter-
gatherers.
Clay is used around the world as a construction material, most commonly baked into brick or roof tiles.
The relative ease with which clay can be extracted from the ground and processed – e.g. by
adding water to change its shape, or increasing its strength by adding straw, sand, etc. – means that it
can be considered 'sustainable'. In addition, it provides relatively good thermal insulation and thermal
mass.
Clay is also an important ingredient in composite materials such as adobe, cob, rammed earth, wattle and
daub, clay plaster, clay mortar, ceramics, and so on.
Clay has good robustness, stability and durability. It is fire-resistant and capable of withstanding
seismic activity, giving it a potential lifespan of 100 years or more.