Twilight Talks

The Green Register's early evening talks supported by Ecomerchant: together promoting ethical, healthy sustainable building materials

Each month The Green Register brings you our Twilight Talks - a relaxed and informal string of events on sustainable building matters to complement our regular training topics.

Each one-hour event is FREE of charge and features short talks from one or more speakers. With Q&A and discussion sessions throughout, everyone is invited to be part of the conversation. We hold Twilight talks at 5-6pm, in the sweet spot between work and dinner – so join us to nourish the mind before replenishing the body!

The New Stone Age: 15 Clerkenwell

In the light of the climate crisis the materials that make up our built environment need more than ever to prove their worth. Stone has serious sustainability credentials; with the ability to reduce a project’s embodied carbon by an incredible 90 per cent compared to typical steel or concrete frames.

Pierre Bidaud will discuss 15 Clerkenwell Close – a love letter to structural stone with its limestone façade and fallen Ionic columns where the fossilised coral, ammonite shells, quartz pockets and seams of the material remain. The building is widely recognised as a new London landmark.

Pierre was the stonemason working on 15 Clerkenwell Close. The project was shortlisted for The Stirling Prize in 2021 and you can see a short YouTube video about the project here.

Pierre wants to broaden the discussion about stone, to acknowledge past architectural achievements and introduce a new generation of architects pushing the boundaries of what is possible with a material that combines practicality and beauty.

Pierre, with a travel through the last 100 years of stone architecture, will make the case for a healthier architecture in stone allying latest engineering development and low-tech system.

About the Speaker

Pierre Bidaud

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 new stone projects, as well as collaborations with designers for furniture.  

A meeting with a structural engineer in 2009 reinforced his belief in his material as a supporting element in contemporary buildings. It is this that fuelled his motivation to embark upon research, and develop a new method of mineral construction, combining stone with steel and high-performance resins, and creating stone on steroids. 

Pierre believes that the survival of the stonemasonry profession depends on re-establishing communications between professional men and women, engineers and architects. It is most important that each sector understands and questions the capacities, limits and desires of each other, to build more honestly and solidly. 

For him, stone materials have an even more relevant place in modern construction, their carbon footprint is much lower than that of concrete, and the implementation of stone manufacture is now easier and faster.

For 10 years he has worked at The Stonemasonry Company with a growing team of stone enthusiasts, designing and developing stone staircases and structures using techniques such as post tensioning, and discreet steel reinforcement, to create works that appear to defy gravity whilst still being loadbearing. 

Twilight Talks are supported by Ecomerchant.