The ETH Materials Hub (MATHUB) is the materials platform at ETH Zurich which harnesses materials expertise for research and teaching. This knowledge can be publicly accessed via the online materials database Material-Archiv (materialarchiv.ch), a cooperation project of eight Swiss educational and cultural institutions. As part of the MATHUB focus project “Naturstein” initiated in 2016, we are producing fact sheets on natural stones in collaboration with the MATHUB and with the support of the Swiss Natural Stone Association (NVS). In this project, the Georesources Switzerland Group is responsible for writing new contributions and reviewing existing ones from a geoscientific point of view. In 2016 the project focussed on gneisses currently extracted in Switzerland. Besides the online publication, the results were shown in the exhibition «Gneis! Ein Schweizer Gestein im Kontext der Architektur» and its accompanying brochure. In 2017 and 2018, fact sheets for all natural stones currently quarried in Switzerland were compiled (e.g. Bollinger Sandstein). In 2019 the focus was extended to include natural stones from abroad that are either used in contemporary architecture or are of historical significance although some of which are no longer mined today. In addition to the natural stones fact sheets, we also compose explanations of geological terms. The fact sheets are also accessible via the ETH Library Search Portal.
