Project:
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
 
Overview:
The John Anderson Building, Rottenrow East, Strathclyde University. Features Grey Basalt Planc stone cladding linear strips applied to exterior façade.
 
Installed almost 10 years ago, the Grey Basalt Planc™ is an innovative product still unique to this day, given its dense, polished basalt finish and its precision machine cut edgings. Strong and yet relatively lightweight with 12mm thickness, it consists of sets sizing 800mm in length and heights of 140/80/60mm wide. The uniform and consistent colour of the grey basalt material delivers a timeless look that is modern, smooth and low maintenance.
 
Choosing a quality Norstone® cladding solution ensures that a building’s façade appearance will remain clean and impressive for years to come. Planc™ - it stands the test of time.
 
Don’t accept cheap, inferior substitutes, if it matters, choose Norstone® stone cladding.

About the Client/Project:
https://www.strath.ac.uk/
 
Strathclyde is a multi-award-winning university in the heart of the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as 'A Place of Useful Learning', Strathclyde is a leading technological University with around 30,000 students from more than 140 nations.
 
Benefiting from a £12 million refurbishment project to develop cutting-edge facilities for advanced laser and plasma physics research, the John Anderson Building is the home of the Department of Physics. The facility boasts a series of specialist bunkers – which have seven tonne, 1-metre-thick doors. They house some of the UK’s most powerful lasers which help university scientists undertake ground-breaking research.

Norstone's management is not moody, but the same cannot be said about our exciting new Range Grey Basalt Aksent™.

As you can see with the photos, given the different light, whether it be brilliant sunshine or soft light, the Norstone Grey Basalt Aksent™ Range creates its own mood to entice and entertain. Its almost a living thing. It reflects the light so it never remains the same. Now that's attractive.

Norstone Grey Basalt Range is part of the new exciting colours of Ebony Basalt, Lavastone Platinum and Graphite and the Silver Grey….or should that be Silver Fox….it certainly has the mood for it.

Introduce yourself to our new range, it is most welcoming.

We showcased a work in progress a while back of an Aksent™ clad doorway that seamlessly blended into the cladding wall - well now we have a video of the completed doorway! This inventive use of an articulated doorway is a very impressive engineering feat.

Norstone® are renowned for manufacturing market-leading natural stone cladding with a versatile range of different stone types, colours and finish effects. In this new deep dive series of blog posts, we are going to reveal more about our natural stone materials, focusing on each type and giving you in-depth important information about the stone’s origins, qualities and special features that mean it fits the Norstone high quality stone cladding range.

In this first instalment, we will be looking at EBONY BASALT. An absolute showstopper, the jet black colour and ultra-smooth polished finish puts this basalt stone cladding on a par with marble and other high end natural stones for desirability. As the darkest stone we source, Ebony Basalt is a premium level product for deluxe applications not afraid to be bold with colour in the traditional sense. The precision honed finish and the dark colour of the stone combine to create a polished effect. Ebony Basalt cladding is available across our AKSENT™, LYNIA™ and PLANC™ stone cladding tile ranges.

According to open source scientific data, Basalt can be defined as a mafic (dark coloured) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of magnesium-rich lava exposed at or very near the surface of a terrestrial planet or a moon.

More than 90% of all volcanic rock on Earth is basalt. Basalt is a key component of oceanic crust as well as the principal volcanic rock in many mid-oceanic islands, including Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Réunion and the islands of Hawaii.

Basalt is often referred to as being ‘out of this world’, and that’s actually a very accurate description – because scientists have discovered Basalt can be found on the Moon and Mars. Much of the Moon's surface is underlain by basaltic lava flows and flood basalts. These areas of the Moon are known as "lunar maria." Olympus Mons is a shield volcano on Mars. It, like most other volcanic features on Mars, was formed from basaltic lava flows. It is the highest mountain on Mars and is the largest known volcano in our solar system.

Basalt is also related to Gabbro, known commercially as ‘Black Granite’. The key difference between the two rock types is their grain size. Basalt is the fine-grained equivalent of gabbro. It is fine grained because the magma cools very rapidly when it flows out onto the surface. This is because Basalts are extrusive (magma erupted to the surface) igneous rocks that cool quickly and have fine-grained crystals. Gabbros are intrusive (magma crystallises below the surface) igneous rocks that cool slowly and have coarse-grained crystals. Gabbros often tend to contain greenish mineral elements whereas Basalt is more neutral (darks, blacks, greys) which is another reason we at Norstone prefer the finish and style of basalt.

The word basalt comes from a Latin word meaning “very hard stone”. Though basalt is typically a dark, black rock, weathering can lead to a variety of colours – at Norstone we only source Ebony (black) and Grey Basalt.

Basalt commonly features a very fine-grained or glassy matrix interspersed with visible mineral grains. It is a hard material but is very workable and ultimately hard wearing when used in posed applications such as veneer or cladding. Our ebony basalt is sourced from basaltic lava formed eons ago, this basalt is darker, denser and finer grained than many other stones including granite or marble.

Basalt is used for a wide variety of purposes. It is commonly crushed for use as an aggregate in construction projects. Crushed basalt is used for road base, concrete aggregate, asphalt pavement aggregate, railroad ballast and many other ‘industrial’ applications. Basalt is also cut into dimension stone such as cobble stones. Thin slabs of basalt are cut and sometimes polished for use as floor tiles, building veneer and even monuments. Basalt has always been used historically, it can be seen for example on paving stones in the city streets of Rome, Italy.

The Basalt stone strips that feature in Norstone’s AKSENT™, LYNIA™ and PLANC™ series of cladding tiles are honed to a smooth surface leaving a silky finish which is matte in appearance and silky smooth to the touch. Basalt stone offers natural longevity making it a worthy investment for adding value to your home.

Because the stone is so dense and fine-grained, it cuts with supreme precision. In fact, the product is so seamless, to find the joins can be something of a “Where’s Wally” exercise (can you spot them in the wall photo below?). This is a bit of fun but emphasises how difficult it is the find the joins once properly installed – the seamless facades you can achieve are incredible.

8 reasons EBONY BASALT is ideal for stone cladding projects:

• Precision machine-cut basalt tiles are millimetre exact for precise layouts
• Tiles are modular and can be installed by a tiler.
• Cuts accurately to avoid waste and damage.
• Ends are L shaped for perfect interlocking tile - no grout required.
• Profiles range between 12/16mm - perfect for those spaces that require thinness but also want to achieve a solid stone cladding look
• Lighter than traditional Rock Panel Range -. approx. 40 kg per m2
• Qualifies for Warranties/guarantees to be installed onto Knauf using laticrete MVIS Adhesive.
• Aksent™ Range has both internal and external ‘stepped’ interlocking corners for ultimate ease of installation
  

Please note: Basalt is a naturally porous stone and therefore it easily attracts and retains oils, dirt, and other contaminants. Norstone UK recommends that you treat EBONY BASALT with a water-based penetrating natural stone sealer to keep the tiles protected, clean and low maintenance.

So, that was our first deep dive of the series – we hope you learned some valuable ‘nuggets’ of information about basalt in general and our very own EBONY BASALT in particular.

If you are curious about basalt as a cladding material, you should really consider ordering a sample so you can see and feel the finish and colours firsthand – you cannot fail to be impressed by basalt!

For more inspiration, check out our project galleries to see some fantastic examples of ebony basalt stone cladding design projects.

Sources / credits: Wikipedia / Geology.com / open.edu / https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasartoni/14351679721/

 

                                           Basalt - ancient meets modern...


From near the earth's surface to your home in just a few million years...
Our new basalt IL (interlocking) wall tiles are honed from igneous basaltic lava rock formed by the rapid cooling  of volcanic lava.
Available in minimalist monochrome ebony and ash grey they are stuff of architects' and designers' dreams.
Even cooler...

Suitable for interiors and exteriors alike - feel free to contact us for details  or request a quote.