Natural stone: Continuity in

architecture from past to

present
Stone in architecture is as old as civilization
itself, yet is just as relevant and in demand
12,000 years later. AIA partner Turkish Stones
explores the range of options most suited to
modern buildings and how architects are
applying age-old attributes to today’s designs.
The use of stone in architecture dates back to the origins of human civilization almost
12,000 years ago. Today, natural stone remains an important material for all architects,
thanks to a number of elemental qualities that bring functionality, character, and
meaning.

Recent archaeological excavations in Turkey at Göbeklitepe have unearthed a religious

site of stone monoliths with figurative engraving dating to 10,000-9,000 BC that we can
say is one of the first examples of architecture at the dawn of human civilization. The
design of these monoliths—their large size, basic structural approach, and expressive
capabilities—shows us that the physical properties of stone have great impact on the
architectural settings, a quality that can be applied in contemporary architecture today
with similar results.

Incorporating stone into architecture requires understanding the different types of

natural stone available. Here’s a look at some of the options of natural stone from
Turkey, which offers a wide range of types such as marble, travertine, limestone, basalt,
dolomite, onyx, and sandstone, and their applications in architecture.  
Marble in architecture

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.”

The fabrication of the large-format, split-face travertine blocks applied mechanically to

the steel façade scaffold in the design by Antoine Predock, AIA, shows the Turkish
Stone sectors’ ability to apply different approaches combining industrial, digital, and
handcraft.

Limestone, dolomite, basalt, and andesite in architecture

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 )

Text by Gökhan Karakuş. Turkish Stones is being promoted by the Istanbul Mineral

Exporters’ Association (İMİB), a professional non-profit association that has overseen all
export activities in Turkey’s minerals sector since 1976. For more information on
architecture in stone, visit www.turkishstones.org.

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.

The history of construction

Primitive building: the Stone Age
The hunter-gatherers of the late Stone Age, who moved about a wide area in search of
food, built the earliest temporary shelters that appear in the archaeological record.
Excavations at a number of sites in Europe dated to before 12,000 BCE show circular
rings of stones that are believed to have formed part of such shelters. They may have
braced crude huts made of wooden poles or have weighted down the walls of tents made
of animal skins, presumably supported by central poles.

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.

The agricultural revolution, dated to about 10,000 BCE, gave a major impetus to

construction. People no longer traveled in search of game or followed their herds but
stayed in one place to tend their fields. Dwellings began to be more permanent.
Archaeological records are scanty, but in the Middle East are found the remains of
whole villages of round dwellings called tholoi, whose walls are made of packed clay; all
traces of roofs have disappeared. In Europe tholoi were built of dry-laid stone with
domed roofs; there are still surviving examples (of more recent construction) of these
beehive structures in the Alps. In later Middle Eastern tholoi a rectangular antechamber
or entrance hall appeared, attached to the main circular chamber—the first examples of
the rectangular plan form in building. Still later the circular form was dropped in favour
of the rectangle as dwellings were divided into more rooms and more dwellings were
placed together in settlements. The tholoi marked an important step in the search for
durability; they were the beginning of masonry construction.

Evidence of composite construction of clay and wood, the so-called wattle-and-

daub method, is also found in Europe and the Middle East. The walls were made of
small saplings or reeds, which were easy to cut with stone tools. They were driven into
the ground, tied together laterally with vegetable fibres, and then plastered over with
wet clay to give added rigidity and weatherproofing. The roofs have not survived, but the
structures were probably covered with crude thatch or bundled reeds. Both round and
rectangular forms are found, usually with central hearths.

Heavier timber buildings also appeared in Neolithic (New Stone Age) cultures, although

the difficulties of cutting large trees with stone tools limited the use of sizable timbers to
frames. These frames were usually rectangular in plan, with a central row of columns to
support a ridgepole and matching rows of columns along the long walls; rafters were run
from the ridgepole to the wall beams. The lateral stability of the frame was achieved by
burying the columns deep in the ground; the ridgepole and rafters were then tied to the
 columns with vegetable fibres. The usual roofing material was thatch: dried grasses or
reeds tied together in small bundles, which in turn were tied in an overlapping pattern
to the light wooden poles that spanned between the rafters. Horizontal thatched roofs
leak rain badly, but, if they are placed at the proper angle, the rainwater runs off before
it has time to soak through. Primitive builders soon determined the roof pitch that
would shed the water but not the thatch. Many types of infill were used in the walls of
these frame houses, including clay, wattle and daub, tree bark (favoured by American
Woodland Indians), and thatch. In Polynesia and Indonesia, where such houses are still
built, they are raised above the ground on stilts for security and dryness; the roofing is
often made of leaves and the walls are largely open to allow air movement for natural
cooling. Another variation of the frame was found in Egypt and the Middle East, where
timbers were substituted for bundles of reeds.
Clay in construction

Clay is a finely-grained natural rock or soil material that, along with other materials such

as stone and wood, has been used as for construction for thousands of years. It is composed of one or
more clay minerals (such as kaolinites or smectites), sometimes with
small quantities of quartz, metal oxides and organic matter. Clay is formed very slowly as a result of
the weathering and erosion of rocks containing the mineral group known as feldspar.

Due to the particle size (typically, a grain size of less than 4 micrometres (μm)),

and water content, clays have a high plasticity until they are dried or fired, at which point they become
hard and brittle.

Classified as a fine soil, clay has the following characteristics:

 Dry lumps can be broken but not powdered between fingers.

 It is smooth to the touch.
 It shrinks on drying which usually leaves cracks.
 Its particles have intermediate to high plasticity.
 It has a sand or gravel content of less than 35%.
 Its compactness is soft.
 Its structure can be fissured, intact, homogeneous, inter-stratified, or weathered.

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.