![This Stone Vault Prototype Creates Almost No Material Waste - Featured Image](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/599b/e6ab/b22e/3825/2300/011d/newsletter/IMG_3479.jpg?1503389338)
Italy-based New Fundamentals Research Group recently designed and built a full-scale prototype of an experimental barrel-vaulted stone structure for SNBR, a French company that specializes in cutting-edge stone construction. The structure is named Hypar Vault in a reference to the geometry of its constituent blocks; it uses two types of prefabricated stone modules—one type is the mirror image of the other—whose designs are based on the hypar (hyperbolic paraboloid), one of the only "doubly-ruled" surfaces in geometry. The use of these configurations allowed the vault to be constructed with almost zero wasted stone.