Skin of Architecture: Slate

Source: Machado and Silvetti Associates

Boston Public Library, Honan-Allston Branch, Allston, Massachusetts, USA, 2001 designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates

The warm material palette is made up of slate shingles and panels, rough slate blocks, and wood cladding. Natural finished wood windows are used with a combination of fixed and operable units. The interior floors are a combination of wood and cork which shares the same warm tones of the exterior materials. -- architect's web site

Source: Koji Fujii archdaily

House of Uchigami, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, 2012 designed by Keisuke Kawaguchi + K2-Design

We adopted rustic natural stone for the exterior walls. By finishing both the roof and walls with the same material, we aimed for the house to have an understated charm while exhibiting distinctive character. -- ArchDaily

Skin of Architecture: Translucent Stone

Source: som.com

Yale University - Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, 1963 designed by SOM

The Beinecke Library contains the principal rare books and literary manuscripts of Yale University, and serves as a center of research for students, faculty, and other scholars, both Yale-affiliated and not. One of the largest buildings in the world devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts, the library has room for 180,000 volumes in its central tower and for over 600,000 volumes in its underground bookstacks. -- architect's web site

 A six-story above-ground tower of book stacks is surrounded by a windowless rectangular building with walls made of a translucent Danby marble, which transmit subdued lighting and provide protection from direct light. -- Wikipedia

Source: Pedro Pegenaute archdaily.com

Bajo Martin County, Híjar (Teruel), Spain designed by Magén Arquitectos

Alabaster, which is extracted from quarries in the area, is one of its main resources, dedicated to both the export and cultural promotion, through routes, meeting craft and art activities, organized annually by the Center for Integrated Development of Alabaster.

The group of carved volumes on local materials -stone and alabaster, alludes, in an abstract and geometric way, to stone groups that occur in quarries in the area. The stone surfaces, opaque or translucent, exhibit materials and expressive features of alabaster in relation to the day or night lighting. -- ArchDaily

Source: Miguel de Guzmán archdaily.com

Archaeological Museum of Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, Spain, 2011 designed by PardoTapia Arquitectos

The program needs are solved through the use of “articulators” that give an identity to the museum. They become a recognized element that answers to the representative and symbolic needs of the institution. The new exposition rooms are designed as “modern cloisters”. Through the light flux work, the spatial continuity is guaranteed. The alabaster front plates and the trusses limestone recreate a Romanesque space. -- ArchDaily

Source: Ieva Saudargaitė archdaily.com

Tahan Villa, Kfour, Lebanon, 2013 designed by BLANKPAGE Architects

It was conceived as an architectural adaptation of the rocks that characterize the surrounding scenery: a massive volume, seemingly floating in the landscape, houses the private living spaces. It is clad with sliding stone panels that echo, in their surface, the texture of the rocks. The final composition – a prismatic stone volume in a landscape topped by a red roof – can be read as a subversion of the traditional Lebanese village house that preserves the fundamental elements present while radically opening up the house towards the view and reinterpreting the surrounding elements of nature (rocks) as dynamic shading devices that let particular sun rays into the private spaces of the house through their seemingly cracked structure. -- ArchDaily

Skin of Architecture: Gabions

Source: Studio J. P.

Dominus Winery, Yountville, California, USA, 1998 designed by Herzog & De Meuron

In front of the façades, we placed gabions, a device used in river engineering, that is, wire containers filled with stones. Added to the walls, they form an inert mass that insulates the rooms against heat by day and cold at night. We chose local basalt that ranges from dark green to black and blends in beautifully with the landscape. The gabions are filled more or less densely as needed so that parts of the walls are very impenetrable while others allow the passage of light: natural light comes into the rooms during the day and artificial light seeps through the stones at night. You could describe our use of the gabions as kind of stone wickerwork with varying degrees of transparency, more like skin than like traditional masonry.  -- architect's web site

Source: a21 studio archdaily.com

Rock Office, Binh Thanh District, Hochiminh City, Vietnam, 2007 designed by a21 studio

The curved stone-walls made by many piled-up-steel-cages contained rocks inside to reduce horizontal force seem to be a suitable solution for this project. Furthermore, they also create the interesting spaces with different views to gardens as seeing from both inside and outside.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Julien Lanoo archdaily.com

Canine Brigade, Nanterre, France designed by TRANSFORM + DS architecture

The use of gabion is a link between the idea of protection and the concept of landscape: used as cladding, it develops the poetics of the occupied wall (citadel, fortress, enclosure …) by means of a constructive technique (natural stone arranged by hand in metal cages) typical of constructions along rivers or protecting mountain roads.  -- ArchDaily

Source: Anagram Architects archdaily.com

Kindred House, India designed by Anagram Architects

The tiling pattern of the wood-clad guestroom block is evinced as minimal fenestrations in the river stone gabion of the meditative spaces and is carried further onto layer of stone slabs that act as the brise soleil for the monolithic block at the rear. This site, one amongst a row of plotted houses, faces south and therefore is exposed to high thermal gain. Thermal stacking in the voids between the blocks draws a gentle breeze into the landscaped areas on different floors. -- ArchDaily

Source: Hufton & Crow archdaily.com

Hackney Marshes Centre, London, UK, 2011 designed by Stanton Williams

The ground floor envelope is treated as a landscaped wall. Gabion blocks, more usually associated with landscaping or civil engineering projects, are deployed in a fashion that recalls agricultural dry stone walls. They will weather well, are resistant to vandalism, and form a good structure for climbing plants. The result will be a living, ‘green wall’, through which light will filter into the changing rooms beyond. -- ArchDaily

Source: Imbue Design archdaily.com

Buddhist Retreat, Torrey, Utah, USA, 2012 designed by Imbue Design

The main exterior walls supporting the meditation deck are clad in gabion cages filled with volcanic rock found at the site and the local vicinity.  The rock not only ties the retreat to the site visually, but also absorbs and dissipates  heat from the hot summer sun through thermal mass and increased surface area. -- ArchDaily

Source: archrecord.construction.com

Hanil Cement Visitors Center and Guesthouse, Danyang, South Korea designed by BCHO Architects Associates

Built for the Hanil Cement Company to educate visitors about concrete and how it can be recycled, architects for the Visitors Center and Guesthouse use a variety of construction and landscaping techniques. From various concrete casting methods to the use of recycled, broken pieces of concrete for tile and gabion walls, the building and displays will continue to evolve and change as new techniques are designed. -- Architectural Record

Source: José María Díez Laplaza archdaily.com

Pago de Carraovejas Winery, Peñafiel, Spain designed by Estudio Amas4arquitectura

The whole proposal for the extension of Pago de Carraovejas sought to keep the old premises where the winery was born and envelop them with the new constructions. Its hillside location allows a gravity—flow winery. Grapes are received at the upper floor, fermentation takes place at the intermediate level and both aging and shipment are located at the lower one. Thus, premises for wine aging, in white concrete, are buried in the slope, while the representative ones, in grape colour concrete, spring up to catch the stunning landscape dominated by Peñafiel Castle, just in the middle of winerys vineyards. -- ArchDaily

Source: Biuro Architektoniczne Barycz & Saramowicz archdaily.com

Forest House, Warsaw, Poland designed by Biuro Architektoniczne Barycz & Saramowicz

....the idea of stylizing the facade with a combination of natural shingle of oak lath with a very innovative material derived from hydroconstruction, such as gabion baskets, which were filled with dolomite from the Libiąż district. -- ArchDaily

Source: Maciej Lulko archdaily.com

House in the Landscape, Zawiercie, Poland, 2013 designed by Kropka Studio

After the Dominus winery ( Herzog & de Meuron ) and Gabion House ( Titus Bernhard ) gabions became frequently used by architects. In this case the main part of the building is finished with gabion baskets ( filled with local limestone) used as an outer skin – kind of camouflage to blend the house in with the landscape. -- ArchDaily

Source: Atelier d’Architecture 3BM3 archdaily.com

The Luxembourg Freeport, Luxembourg designed by Atelier d’Architecture 3BM3

An envelope with practically no windows, light sources by skylights, heavy weight and spectacular looking doors lead to the premises, high performance facades that prevent both a significant addition of heat and air conditioning leaking outside the building. This skin is lined by a gabions shield, which allows the image of the building to vibrate and vary according to the mood of light and time. -- ArchDaily