The German Natural Stone Award 2003 has been won by Berlin architects Ortner & Ortner for a new building for the Saxon state library in Dresden.

The judges felt Laurids and Manfred Ortner succeeded in creating a building that meets the requirements of contemporary architecture as well as architectural culture.

The 4,700m2 library facade has been clad in Thuringian travertine used in 1220 x 900mm slabs, 60mm thick.

The construction is of conventional design using supporting and restraining anchors with rear ventilation. The joints are 5-8mm to give the building a monolithic appearance. The joints are filled with permanently elastic filler and \'sanded off\' with a mixture of quartz sand and stone dust.

Flutings of 40mm and 160mm wide and about two centimetres deep were cut in the surface of the slabs using a diamond saw and then roughly ground by hand. These grooves, arranged in six different grids, together with the natural colour variations of the stone create a fluidity to the building.

The construction and installation of the natural stone was carried out by Lauster Steinbau of Stuttgart. The Thuringian travertine was supplied by Traco GmbH of Bad Langensalza.

The Award will be presented during Stone+tec (www.stone-tec.com), the major two-yearly exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, being staged 29 May to 1 June this year.

Following on the heels of Nuremberg comes the Carrara Marmotec exhibition (4-7 June), the first of Italy\'s two annual stone shows (www.carraramarmotec.com).