Brick from a stone: Arch Revival

Set against the historic backdrop of Clerkenwell Green, the striking vaulted hyperbolic arches of Brick from a Stone: Arch Revival Pavilion formed an elegant centrepiece to the 2025 edition of Clerkenwell Design Week. An annual jamboree of talks, installations, and exhibitions, the event attracts a mix of architects, designers and journalists looking for new movements in materiality, design and architecture. Positioned between two red telephone boxes, the arches nodded politely towards their brick-built context, but they held a profound difference that might not have been immediately noticeable to the Design Week throng: a powerful potential to decarbonise the built environment. The secret is in their bricks; they are made of stone.

Arch Revival Pavilion. Image Credit, Will Pryce

A masterclass in form, Arch Revival was designed by award-winning architects Hawkins/Brown using advanced parametric digital tools to test patterns and define the dimensions and placement of each brick within the arch. By shifting from a traditional semicircular to a hyperbolic arch and using a Flemish bond, the designers were able to achieve an elegantly slender wall thickness of 102mm – further reducing material use and embodied carbon. This subtle formal innovation underscores the role of geometry in sustainable design as beautifully illustrated by the work undertaken by industry leading engineers Webb Yates.

Arch Revival Pavilion. Image Credit, Will Pryce

Sourced from Albion Stone’s Portland stone in Dorset and Hutton Stone’s Darney Sandstone in Northumberland, the bricks are testament to the natural beauty and regional character of British geology. The installation shows the possibilities of stone bricks, including T-shaped ‘specials’ – bespoke bricks made possible by recent investment in state-of-the-art cutting machinery by both suppliers – as well as the projecting bricks of the design which, uncompromised by the frogs, the central depression in clay bricks – offers huge design potential.

Stone bricks offer a compelling sustainable alternative to traditional clay fired bricks. Impressively, the Arch Revival structure has 66% less embodied carbon than had the same structure been built with clay-fired bricks. The twin arches shared their form but showcased two distinct stone bricks, with one using Heritage Portland Stone Bricks from Albion in Portland with the other arch displaying Darney Stock Heritage Stone Bricks from Hutton Stone’s home in the Scottish Borders and North Northumberland as well as other red, pink and orange Northern UK Sandstone Bricks also within their Stone Brick range. Side by side the qualities of each brick became a pull for appreciative visitors who could see the beautiful variation in the shell and fossil pitted Albion bricks formed at the bottom of a rich, tropical Jurassic Sea compared to the tactile tones and finish of Hutton’s stone bricks.

Arch Revival Pavilion close-up. Image Credit, Will Pryce

Height was determined by transportation with the addition of stone benches adding extra elevation and creating the perfect place to sit and watch the Clerkenwell Design Week crowds. The arches were fabricated at Albion Stone with the stone bricks laid over formwork, resulting in a structure with twice the strength of a clay equivalent. The addition of four slender rebars were added not for structural certainty, but to ensure that the journey to London wouldn’t damage the arches.

Arch Revival set up. Video Credit, Albion Stone

Undoubtedly beautiful, Arch Revival holds a powerful message in an elegant form; stone bricks are serious contenders to their clay cousins – a way to respect historical context and appease planners while at the same time decarbonising our built environment. The use of stone structurally is a growing conversation; as a material it’s a great investment for the future lasting hundreds of years. The Arch Revival makes the case for showing what stone can do best, holding up a building.

Marcus Paine of Hutton Stone references Scottish Arts and Crafts Movement architect Robert Lorimer (1864 – 1929) who was a familiar figure at quarries. With an approach rooted in the Arts and Crafts Movement’s emphasis on traditional building crafts and local materials, Lorimer’s work was influenced by learning stonemasonry skills as a young man. His understanding of stone meant that he could specify stone that was well suited to each project, getting the best from every stone and ensuring cost effectiveness. It’s an approach that Michael Poultney of Albion Stone would like to encourage, urging architects not to impose designs on the quarry but rather visit and work with the quarry to ensure the best design approach.

Arch Revival Pavilion with crowds. Image Credit, Will Pryce

This gap in materials knowledge was a key motivation for starting ARCHITEXTURES and in particular these Stories; to help develop an understanding of materials and how to appropriately specify them, enabling architects to own their decisions. The Arch Revival is an example of what can happen when architects, engineers and material providers come together to make architecture based not only on knowledge, but mutual respect.

Vanessa Norwood is a curator and consultant for the built environment advocating for low-carbon architecture and materials.