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Mined in northern Tuscany, Carrara marble has been used as a building medium since as far back as the ancient Roman era, and can be recognized in famous historical structures like The Pantheon as well as numerous Renaissance sculptures. Carrara marble saw a resurgence in the mid-20th century, though modern structures tend to use the marble as an architectural finish rather than as a structural material.
Over the course of the last generation, the bright white stone has been used to clad the exterior of a number of notable structures, including the famous Oslo Opera House. While many of these applications have ultimately proven successful, the thin marble veneers typically used in modern construction coupled with extreme climates have led to a number of cladding failures for other Carrara marble-faced structures around the world. Today, we will look at five notable structures that had to replace their original marble cladding.
Aon Center: Chicago
Originally known as the Standard Oil Building, then the Amoco Building, and most recently known as the Aon Center, this 346-metre, 83-storey office tower features a design by architect Edward Durell Stone and was completed in 1974. The building hadn't even completed construction when the first panel of Carrara marble cladding, weighing around 350 pounds, came crashing down to the street below. Serious deficiencies had become apparent by 1985, leading to the installation of temporary reinforcements until the entire building was eventually refaced with a more durable type of marble in the early 1990s.
In 2009, the owners of Toronto's (and Canada's) tallest building, First Canadian Place, announced that they would follow the example set by the Aon Center and replace the office tower's 45,000 Carrara marble panels with white laminated fritted glass and bronze glass corner panels. The original 298-metre office tower was also designed by Edward Durell Stone in the early 1970s, well before the properties of these marble veneers were fully understood.
La Grande Arche: Paris
Paris' La Grande Arche de la Défense began construction in 1985 at the northwest end of the city's Historical Axis. Construction of the structure was completed in time for the Bicentennial of the French Revolution on July 14, 1989. Over the last 25 years, the marble panels have aged poorly due to Paris' climate and pollution, and the structure is now undergoing a €192 million renovation that will replace the Carrara marble exterior with granite panels before the end of 2016.
Finlandia Hall: Helsinki
Built between 1967 and 1971, Helsinki's Finlandia Hall was originally clad in three-centimetre-thick panels of Carrara marble. By 1991, safety nets had been installed around the building to protect passersby from falling panels. Two years later, the Finnish government officially protected the building as an architectural landmark, complicating future measures to rectify cladding failures. Between 1997 and 1999, a new marble cladding with improved properties was installed.
The Metropolitan: Rochester
Constructed in 1973, the 27-storey The Metropolitan — then known as Lincoln First Bank, and more recently Chase Tower — is the second tallest building by roof height in Rochester, New York. The structure hadn't even stood for a decade when deficiencies such as bowing and cracking appeared on the marble-clad fins. This culminated in the removal of 17,000 slabs of Carrara marble from the exterior fins of the tower in 1982, which were then replaced by aluminum panels.
Do you have a favourite building that is or was once clad in Carrara marble? Let us know in the comments section below!
