Stone

=STONE =

Stone is a construction material used in architecture and urban planning. The advantages of stone are durability, adaptability to sculptural treatment and the fact that it can be used in its natural state. The disadvantages that stone has are that it’s difficult to quarry transport and cut, and it’s weakness in tension. Stone is expensive and unstable with loads pushing al angles.

With stone we can build different things using rubble or ashlar masonry. **Rubble is the simplest and cheapest stonework and consists in roughly broken stones of any shape bounded in mortar.** Ashlar Masonry **is the strongest and most suitable stonework for monumental architecture**, which consist of regularly cut blocks ( usually rectangular). An example for bonding in Ashlar Masonry stonework can be the **entablatures that are the upper sections of a classical order the rest on the capital of a column,** **that are made of small bronze dowels.**

But the best stone bonding is that in which blocks are placed so that the vertical joints in one course are not about the joints in the course above and below. For this reason mortar is barely needed. Stone has been consistently used for building since the Stone Age. Although it has generally been replaced as a structural material by cheaper and more efficient manufactured products, it is still used as a surface veneer for its practical and expressive qualities.