Resort Villas, Yunnan, China

The original design called for natural stone cladding. On a hillside site with restricted crane access and a tight structural allowance, that was going to be both slow and expensive. We proposed flexible stone on a ventilated aluminum sub-frame: the same stone reading at 4.6 kg/m² instead of roughly 60 kg/m² for 30 mm natural stone.

The reduction in dead load let the structural engineer avoid reinforcing the villa walls, and the panels were carried up by hand. Facade installation finished eleven weeks ahead of the natural-stone programme.