#16 Pierre Bidaud
Load Bearing Stone for Low Carbon Contemporary Architecture
Media Detail
Pierre Bidaud has been a stonemason for 30 years. After his Tour de France, he left for England in 1998, working mainly in restoration, he developed an interest in design and contemporary architecture and in 2005 began to work on stone projects. new as well as collaboration with designers for furniture. A meeting with a structural engineer in 2009, will reinforce his belief in his materials as a supporting element in contemporary buildings. This is how he embarks on research and development of a new method of mineral construction, mixing with steel, other high-performance resins, creating a stone on steroid.
Pierre believes that the survival of the profession depends on re-establishing communications between professional men and women, engineers and architects. It is most important that each sector understand, question the capacities, limits, desires of each other to build more honestly and solidly. For him, stone materials have an even more relevant place in modern construction, its carbon footprint much lower than that of concrete, with the implementation of stone work now even easier and faster.
For 10 years he has worked at the Stonemasonry Company with a small team of stone lovers, designing, developing stone stairs and structures using techniques such as post tensioning, and discreet steel reinforcement, which allows structures to defy gravity while still being a loadbearing.
For Pierre, the staircase is an object that requires a wide range of knowledge, aesthetically, it must be pleasant to see, harmonious in its set up, functional, the ascent must be done with pleasure, thus understanding the ergonomics of movement for each context and of course structurally sound, stairs require solidity and integrity. We can thus speak of a mineral ascension.
For Pierre, even more now, the stonemason, with his knowledge, his materials, need to become again a protagonist, a leader, and not a simple actor in modern construction. It is important that the stonemason finds its place as designer, maker and developer of stone solution.
