One of the biggest challenges facing architecture today, alongside climate change, is accessibility. We are still a long way from an architecture that is not geared towards standardized people, but takes into account the diversity of all. You can find out which approaches can help with this challenge in our September issue. Read more in the editorial by Editor-in-Chief Fabian Peters.
Accessibility still a long way off
In 2013, Horst Seehofer, then Bavarian Minister President, promised his citizens that the federal state would be completely barrier-free by 2023. Progress has undoubtedly been made since then – but we will still be a long way from complete accessibility in 2023. And in this case, we are “only” talking about making accessibility possible for a very limited group of people – mainly people who have difficulty walking, are in a wheelchair or are dependent on a walking aid. To a lesser extent, accessibility supports people with impaired vision.
Even if these limitations are the ones we usually have in mind when we talk about “people with disabilities”, there is hardly anyone who has never experienced accessibility. Almost everyone has been excluded at some point, has not found access because they deviate from the norm in some way. And we all deviate from the norm – in a wide variety of ways. Physical differences are only the most obvious. We all need architecture that does not presuppose the standardized person, but is able to deal with our diversity. Demographic change will make this even more urgent.
Architecture must change profoundly in order to be inclusive
But in the last hundred years, architecture has developed in exactly the opposite direction, says Joel Sanders. The architect, who teaches at Yale, and his firm MIXdesign have come up with some of the most remarkable approaches to universally inclusive architecture. You can read his essay from page 14 onwards. Sanders points out that the interest in standardized people is a certain characteristic of modern architecture. Le Corbusier’s Modulor or Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre are two of the best-known results. Sander’s insight must make us realize how profoundly today’s architecture must change in its essence in order to be truly inclusive. Alongside the climate crisis, this is a second major challenge that architects will face in the future.
The B9 is available in our online store: All Inclusive.
In the Glaze module of the Digital Drylayout – DDL.20 planning software, selected raw slabs can be aligned and combined using drag-and-drop. Photo: Lasa Marmo
With the new planning software Digital Drylayout – DDL.20, architects, designers, stonemasons, and dealers can plan natural stone projects, select materials, generate reports and cutting data for production, and place orders. The tool is free for architects and designers. Civil engineer Jan Keller, through his company Art Emotional, developed it in collaboration with Lasa Marmo as a partner in the stone industry. It is intended to be made available to other industry players in the future. Especially during the pandemic, it can be seen as a beacon of hope for decentralized projects in the natural stone sector.
In the “Blendung” module of the Digital Drylayout – DDL.20 planning software, selected raw slabs can be aligned and combined using drag-and-drop. Photo: Lasa Marmo
As user-friendly as a B2C online store
The picturesque South Tyrol, where Laas marble is quarried, is hard to beat in terms of idyllic beauty: The Weißwasser quarry lies at 1,567 meters above sea level in the heart of the national park; down in the valley, countless apple orchards cluster around the little village of Laas, and beyond that: lots of greenery, lots of silence. A wonderful place to live. For selling natural stone: not quite so much. After all, the marble is sold all over the world, and even without a pandemic, Laas is remote from these markets and international target audiences.
In the age of COVID-19, when customers often cannot inspect raw slabs in person (and even afterward, when society will likely have grown accustomed to traveling less), a digital solution is all the more necessary. For years now, Lasa Marmo has therefore been leveraging digital capabilities; it integrated a special scanner into its production process early on to precisely scan raw slabs and was one of the first in the industry to develop a database. Now comes its successor—initially in English—a “Stone Gallery” designed to be particularly transparent and user-friendly.
It currently includes 3,000 slabs (primarily from the LASA !ndividual line so far), representing about 30 percent of the potential inventory, and is set to be continuously expanded. In addition, there are 2,000 slabs that Lasa Marmo uses to organize current projects. Digitally rendering the light-reflecting white marble—including its veining—with color calibration was a particular challenge. The stated goal: to reproduce the color gradient in the material so precisely that it can be digitally viewed in full detail.
Instead of simply featuring a single slab as a “representative” of an entire raw block—from which the customer must infer the rest—the Stone Gallery also displays all the slabs from the block. Product Manager Kurt Ratschiller says: “The raw slabs are all scanned in high resolution, tagged, and archived. We have an interface running in the background with our inventory management system, so the customer can access current stock levels in real time. We’re working on displaying defects in the raw slabs in the database as well.”
This is also intended to increase the net yield of the material and thus make operations more sustainable: After all, unique veining patterns and heterogeneous materials can be combined as desired. Keller explains that, particularly in interior design, projects are popular where, for example, the grain pattern of a wall panel looks as if it were cut from a single block of marble.
Planning such patterns has been very time-consuming—and therefore expensive—up until now. This is due in no small part to the approval process, during which the slabs are laid out according to the final installation plan. For the Stone Gallery, the developers drew inspiration from major B2C players like Amazon and Booking.com when it comes to user-friendliness. This is forward-thinking, as digitalization has become ubiquitous and users demand a convenient customer journey, regardless of whether they’re shopping online for personal use or researching raw slabs for professional purposes. For example, the database offers selection filters such as five price categories with prices per square meter and allows users to compare slabs from a preselected list as well as reserve materials.
New Planning Tool for Architects and Stonemasons
The millimeter-precise scanning of raw slabs enables a major leap forward in digital planning: Lasa Marmo’s database is connected to DDL.20, a software solution for Digital Dry Layout, or digital blending. Jan Keller from the company Art Emotional developed this new tool in collaboration with the team at Lasa over the course of a two-year project. His goal is to provide an intuitive interface between CAD programs and the stone industry: “DDL.20 ensures that communication among all parties involved in a natural stone project is internationally understandable, using clear images, definitive figures, and processing data. This allows us to achieve a new economy in the use of natural stone and more sustainable projects. We want to become an industry pioneer—a kind of Booking.com for natural stone.”
The idea for the program originated during the World Trade Center Transportation Hub project: For this major contract in New York, Lasa Marmo supplied a total of 40,000 square meters of marble from 2012 to 2016. During the more than 130 inspections and acceptance meetings between the U.S. and South Tyrol, the need for a digital tool became apparent. In general, Keller says, most of the planning processes in the industry have so far been cumbersome and time-consuming because natural stone has not been successfully integrated with the possibilities of digitalization.
How the digital planning process works
Keller and his team offer free webinars to introduce users to the DDL.20 platform. And Lasa Marmo provides a planning team that works behind the scenes to offer support, monitor projects, and step in when needed. Basically, the tool works as follows: Architects and construction planners create a project—such as a wall cladding project—and upload their corresponding design in DXF format. In the integrated Stone Gallery, they can select suitable raw slabs, which are then reserved for their project.
In the blending module, they can now customize the planned wall cladding. The selected slabs are positioned with millimeter precision and are scaled and transferred to the project plan via drag-and-drop. There, they can be aligned, moved, and combined based on their grain pattern, for example. A special feature indicates the best possible use of the raw material.
In the background, the tool generates production files from the layouts and, if necessary, issues error messages in case of overlaps or missing production margins. If needed, multiple designs can be created, even by different project participants. The project manager defines their permissions and roles within the tool. Changes made during the planning process are also no problem: The system saves the data in the background, so a complete re-blending isn’t necessarily required when an update is made.
In the next step, the blending variants can be loaded directly into rendering programs. The result is a detailed report containing all key parameters for the entire value chain: cost calculation, quotation preparation, and cutting preparation. For fabricators, the report simplifies production control because a so-called cutting ticket precisely lists the sawing data for each slab. In this step, Lasa Marmo provides feedback if the use of the material could be planned more economically. The entire process—from material inspection, planning, and blending to quality control, production, and acceptance—is thus digitized.
In the future, Keller plans to open up the tool to other quarry operators and thus to other types of natural stone in addition to Laas marble, thereby “giving the industry new momentum.”
The “Tectus Glas” hinge system from Simonswerk offers a comprehensive hardware solution for all-glass doors. For the first time, the door leaf and frame are on the same level.
The “Tectus Glas” hinge system from Simonswerk offers a comprehensive hardware solution for all-glass doors. For the first time, the door leaf and frame are on the same level – creating a continuous and minimalist look. The patented hinge technology is barely visible and offers reliable and durable functionality thanks to the stable hinge kinematics. It is used for glass doors in the interior fittings of residential and commercial buildings on wooden, steel and aluminum frames.
A magnetic lock and several handles are available to match the hinge technology. The hardware components are installed using an easy-to-install clamping and plug-in system; no glass processing is required on the door leaf. Another advantage is the opening angle of 180°.
