Amin Taha's architecture studio Groupwork has collaborated with structural engineer Webb Yates to design a conceptual 30-storey stone office block that would be cheaper and more sustainable than concrete or steel equivalents.
Groupwork and Webb Yates designed the skyscraper to investigate how the cost and sustainability impact of a tall building with a stone structure compared to one with a concrete or steel structure.
The research found that large commercial buildings could be built more cheaply and with less of an environmental impact using stone rather than concrete or steel.
"It's research to investigate how tall you can go in stone," Taha told Dezeen. "[To] demonstrate to commercial clients ? that are consistently building a lot and at a large scale ? that it's cheaper and enables a 90 per cent reduction of embodied CO2." A model of the skyscraper is part of the New Stone Age exhibition
The research showed that a stone tower with stone floors would have considerably reduced levels of embodied carbon compared to steel or concrete structures.

"Inherently, stone has zero carbon footprint," stated the report. "It is the energy used in quarrying, preparing and lifting the stone into place where CO2 builds up."

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