KS1528 NaStA

History and future of natural stones in architecture – bridge between South-East Finland and Russia

The target area of the NaStA project is active in natural stone production and even has a global importance with relation to certain natural stone types. The most important stone types used for the historical buildings in St. Petersburg have been the unique Finnish Rapakivi Granite, which is still produced in the region today. The overall objective of NaStA project was to attract business to invest, locate and operate in the programme area. Special objectives of the project were to support and improve the operational environment of the SMEs by promoting the knowledge on natural stones used in historical constructions, their origin and possible substitutes in restoration works, creation of a framework for logistic cluster and preserving and revitalizing the cultural and historical natural stone heritage and supporting tourism business.

The NaStA focused to collected data of historical natural stone used in buildings and construction in St. Petersburg and in selected cities in Finland. The old quarry areas of these historical stone types were located and mapped in field work. In the same context, alternative new stone deposit areas for the historical stone types of these old quarries were mapped. Alternative sources for the natural stone have been mapped in case that the original stones can no longer be quarried in old quarries. The exact quarry site of the historical natural stones is often unknown. Therefore, tools for identification of similarity of old and fresh new stones were also developed and different chemical methods were tested to achieve the appearance of old historical natural stones for new produced stones. Business opportunities and logistic supply chain were tried to describe and develop.

As achievements of the NaStA project, there are two databases of natural stone objects in the cities, one from the St. Petersburg and one from the selected targets from Southeastern Finland. In addition, there are two databases of old historical quarries and quarry areas, one from Russia and other from Southeastern Finland.

Results and publications: NaStA – Results and publications (gtk.fi)

Video: “The Story of Stone”