The long relationship between stone and water is the focus of an upcoming industry event bringing together landscape and architectural perspectives this week. Organised by the Stone Collective, Stone Speaks Water examines how the two materials have historically shaped one another, while highlighting contemporary projects that reinterpret that exchange through design, fabrication and reuse.

“For millennia, stone has been in dialogue with water,” the organisers note. “From stone-built cisterns to flour mills where stone and water became a single machine, stone has shaped how water is stored, used, diverted and resisted.” At the same time, they add, water has “carved, weathered and culturally charged stone,” underscoring a reciprocal relationship that continues to inform design thinking today.

Central to the programme are two UK projects that demonstrate how this relationship can be reimagined through both landscape architecture and structural innovation.

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in London’s Hyde Park remains one of the most recognisable examples of stone and water working in unison at a civic scale. Designed by Gustafson Porter + Bowman and completed more than two decades ago, the project combines a carefully modelled landform with a continuous water flow that encourages public interaction. Its construction, which contains 545 individually cut pieces of Cornish granite, shaped using early digital fabrication techniques, marked a significant moment in the application of advanced tooling to natural stone.

Mary Bowman, founding partner of the practice, and trained architect and landscape architect will reflect on the project’s legacy and the role of landscape architecture in shaping public space. 

Alongside this large-scale public work, the event will also present a more compact but materially ambitious project by Studio Weave: a stone toilet block in Maida Vale that explores the structural and aesthetic potential of self-supporting masonry.

The building reuses granite salvaged from 100 Liverpool Street, a demolished Broadgate office building originally designed by Peter Foggo of Arup in the 1980s. Developed with Webb Yates and The Stonemasonry Company, the scheme foregrounds the textures of stone processing while embedding circular principles into its construction. Studio Weave’s intervention utilises Finnish granite and Larvikite from Norway and has been detailed so it can be demounted and reassembled elsewhere, sparking further discussions around reconfiguration and adaptability in the built environment.

Eddie Blake and Esther Escribano of Studio Weave will present the project, offering an early insight into its design and fabrication.

Reserve a free place here.

Join the team at The Market Building, Thursday 26th March 6-8pm