Karmen Peternelj, Sanja Alaber, Miloš Bavec, Stefano Devoto, Stefano Furlani, Goran Glamuzina, Jernej Jež, Tvrtko Korbar, Maja Oven Stanič, Maria Luisa Perissinotto, Fabiana Pieri, Duška Rokavec, Ivan Stanič, Domen Zupančič
Stone veneer is also used for paving. Paving stone plates are laid on a sand bed in vernacular architecture. This detail has been preserved to this day and has only been complemented by cement (dry concrete bed).
The role of paving is a multi-faceted one. The aim of strengthening a surface is complemented by the role of paving and its position in the urban fabric. A city or village square is always surrounded by important buildings (cathedral, town hall, court house, city granary), which is why the design of market surfaces follows the surrounding architecture. A square in the city is generally carefully thought out and uses regularly cut and shaped plates (Fig. 5.10). Less means are devoted to a square in a rural environment, where rough carved plates are used.
The paving in public areas must ensure serviceability for different users (pedestrians, vehicles and events) and allow use in different seasons. Street paving has a clear focus on larger stones with strong edges. Diagonal paving facilitates adaptation to undulating surfaces and changes in street directions. We can see an example of this paving in Zadar, Croatia. Stone paving is more of an exception than the rule around shepherd's huts in the rural environment. Stones are not shaped in any way and are placed close to one another.
Platy limestone is a non-standard building material in architecture. The team of experts who participated in the RoofOfRock project finds that there is only a handful of quarries in the entire project area that could provide suitable platy limestone. The only possibility for using this building material is the recycling of stone plates from existing buildings. The re-use of such building material represents an additional workload – verification of the suitability for re-use in a new location or new building. We should emphasise that such material has already been exposed to the external effects of the weather and is past the optimum time for the use of the material. These stone plates are predominantly (more than 50%) of lower quality or even unsuitable for re-use in architecture. The quality is not the only thing making them unsuitable since re-use must also consider the local origin of the material. Stone from Dalmatia, for example, cannot be re-used in Istria and the other way around, even if it is a similar shape on the original building and the replacement building.
Upon the decision to re-use limestone plates, the responsible project manager or head of conservation interventions must obtain technical approval that confirms the compliance of the re-use of material.
The design of the structural elements and buildings made of stone does not only mean buildings with stone blocks and laying of plates onto the roof structure. The design of dwellings, work premises, sacral buildings, fortifications and other small structures is extremely diverse in the entire project area. The uniformity of the building material and the variety of shapes bear witness to the rich cultural heritage of the communities included in the project.
