Natural stone between shape and structure

Abstract The oldest building material in the world, stone, still retains its modernity on the new millennium, giving birth to experimental shapes and new ways of expression. A research, developed at the Department of Architecture of Catania, proposes a reinforced masonry built with blocks of natural and local stone. The results obtained by tests, performed at the Laboratorio Ufficiale Prove Materiali of University of Catania, on sample panels of reinforced masonry and prestressed masonry, showed good performances of reinforced masonry and better performances of prestressed masonry. More over we obtained good results about the performances of a prestressed masonry panel in different conditions and with different shapes too. Now a new phase of research has began to test the construction of the full-scale prestressed masonry panel. This allows us to check the constructive procedure and control the mechanical strength to be compared with results obtained from the calculations. In this paper same preliminary results concerning the new phase of research will be reported.