The 2018 RIBA Sterling prize was announced this week, the winner is the Bloomberg Building, by Foster + Partners. Priced at around  £1B, it uses 9600 tonnes of the Derbyshire sandstone, Stanton Moor, from Marshalls. The same stone was used over the street on the Victorian court house. Love it or hate it, it is a worthy winner out of this years shortlisted projects. It is the most amount of natural stone used on a central London project in over a century.

Under Construction in 2016:

Completed:

The project has been underway for ten years, and has the highest BREAAM rating for any corporate building in the world at 98.5.

You can hear project lead Michael Jones talk about the design process and the requirement for collaboration in the brief, as well as the old-and-new tension encountered in the natural building products, like the stone and the relocated Roman Temple compared to the more modern high sustainability in the building use.

This is a short video by Architects Journal featuring Micheal Jones of Foster + Partners:

Rear Elevation:

Project Team

Architect: Foster + Partners
Client: Bloomberg
Main contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine
Structural engineer: AKT II
QS: Aecom
Lighting engineer: Tillotson Design Associates
Building services engineer: Sweco

For other shortlisted projects for this years Sterling go to the RIBA website here.

Marshalls quarry the stone out of the ground making the block available. This is where organisations like us come in. API Stone can source Stanton Moor sandstone direct from Marshalls in the form of block by the tonne, and we can cut and dress the stone as required for a project, whether typical handset like the Bloomberg, modern rainscreen, or traditional detailing works. Give us a call and we can go through your project and see what stone type would suit you, cost from drawings and organise samples.

Feel free to fill in our contact form.