Stone, as a raw material, has a strength and artistry that has endured millennia. It has served as both structural foundation and beautiful ornamentation, a medium of dialogue that speaks to permanence, to durability, to versatility, and to creativity in the spaces that have defined human experiences time and again. Humanity’s relationship with it is old and yet the possibilities of what can be done with the material to transform landscape into place continue to expand—and for GI Stone, a premier stone fabricator, installer, and supplier based in Chicago, the versatility of the material that has been used across cultural landscape and time is a cornerstone of the company’s ethos.
Founded in 1995, GI Stone is WBE/MBE Certified and is a leading stone contractor that has become known for its versatility in interior and exterior work over its 30-year history. It has built an impressive portfolio of commercial work working with clients, such as One Bennet Park, Embry, The Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons Hotel, Tribune Tower Residences, Crying Tiger, Northwestern Outpatient Hospital, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and the Obama Presidential Center, to name a few. Based in Chicago’s industrial district, on the edge of Fulton Market District along W. Hubbard Street, GI Stone sits at the intersection of past and future, grit and creativity, as it continues to redefine what is possible with stone for clients and their spaces.
Recently, GI Stone announced its official launch into the luxury residential design space—a return to its origins in a manner of speaking—as the stone contractor found itself fielding more queries about private residential work from people who had seen their work in hotels, luxury apartment towers, and other commercial spaces over the years. And with industry veteran Cathy Scratch at the helm as Luxury Division Director at GI Stone, bringing over 30 years of experience in leadership, business development, project management, and client services from her previous role at Material Bespoke Stone + Tile, the company is now offering its services to private homeowners and designers for the first time.
“We did initially start in homes and then very quickly went into the commercial end of the business, because that is what attracted me. I loved the concept of doing high-rises and multi-family projects and hospitality. It is something that really resonated with me, and I really loved the whole camaraderie and teamwork. I liked the discipline. I like things to be very clear, very structured, and even though we are dealing with very beautiful materials that are very organic and require a certain aesthetic sensibility, they also require structure,” said Sandya Dandamudi, president and second-generation woman owner of GI Stone.
“Over the years, we grew successfully into this area and then had friends and family and clients who came to us and ask us to do their home—and the demand kept growing. Today, buildings are very different than they were 30 years ago, and now these homes have the attention they deserve. They have a design team, a project management team, and a lot of time an architect, so they have a good team and those are the type of places we completely belong in, where we are working in a collaborative, disciplined, and often academic environment because of the technicality involved. It’s the perfect combination of aesthetics and technicality,” Dandamudi added.
There has also been a significant shift in industry trends and consumer expectations for the residential market—what a home can and does mean for the general population across the nation, particularly since the pandemic—and the investment people make in creating a space that can live, elevate, and adapt to future needs, as well as future generations. It is this shift and the cross-pollination of ideas across hospitality and commercial and residential spaces that has blurred the traditional boundaries of what defines place that has also contributed to GI Stone’s move into residential. Dandamudi noted that she has observed a cultural shift when it comes to the home over the last couple of decades, which might also be a result of the modern work environment, that rather than investing in a home simply for the resale value, people are building homes to last, to create memories.
“I come from a culture where homes have been in the family for generations. Nobody just sold their home; it is actually very rare. Whereas here, my perception of our culture was that you bought a home and you sold it and you bought a new home, which there are great tax incentives for us to do that. There is a practicality there, but what I am seeing right now is that people want to live there. They want to work there. They want to raise their children there, and I think now more than ever, the home has become extremely important,” Dandamudi said.
“So, this is about more than just moving into luxury residential. We thought that these were two separate worlds and that maybe because we are unique contractors we would be priced out of the market. I’ve found none of that to be true. We are so efficient that our higher cost of labor is balanced by that, we don’t squander time, and as a result, our book is full,” Dandamudi added.
GI Stone soft-launched its luxury residential design practice nearly two years ago, building its portfolio very organically and learning some of the nuances of working in the market alongside homeowners and their design teams. For Dandamudi, there is something so wonderful and gratifying to watching their residential clients walk into a home and being absolutely surprised and stunned after placing their trust in the team to deliver stone in whatever capacity is needed.
GI Stone, which was founded by Dandamudi’s mother and interior design industry veteran, Rani Dandamudi, provides fabrication and installation of stone across a wide range of interior and exterior concepts, ranging from cladding, floors, and countertops to furniture and custom work. The company is a collaborator at heart, building and maintaining strong relationships not only with local and international stone suppliers—sourcing ethical, high-quality raw materials—but also the designers, architects, contractors, clients, and homeowners throughout the design process.
“Collaboration is really important, because we’re finish contractors at the end of the day. We come in at the end, which means we need a good team to be able to bring us there, whether it is a person who is doing cabinetry or millwork or flooring—which we often do—or the designer, even just from a practical, economic level. The collaboration is really important, because all of us are a piece of the puzzle and often our work is on top of somebody else’s work,” Dandamudi said. “We’re very machine-driven and there are finishes and certain carving details that can be incorporated that often our clients don’t know about so by bringing us earlier on in the process, we can actually show the team what they might not have thought of yet.”
Dandamudi said in the case of a residential project the company has already completed in Hinsdale, they worked alongside the client and design team to talk about what was possible with a material called Dekton, a carbon-neutral, ultracompact composite material inspired by natural stone. In the end, the team ended up using 56-inch-by-56-inch Dekton panels for the flooring, a scale that is not really possible in natural stone without impacting the load-bearing capabilities in the structure of the home, and installed a backlit staircase that is constructed from Dekton. While not necessarily less expensive to work with, the material doesn’t require the same type of mud setting and traditional motor blends as other surface materials, reducing cost throughout the process.
“We do get involved in the creative side when collaborating with design teams, often influencing the original design, sometimes dramatically. I think it’s because creativity is dependent on knowledge. Many of the designers we collaborate with are not aware of how advances in technology have expanded the range of design possibilities. Knowing what’s possible almost invariably leads designers to alter their original plans. For example, thanks to ultra-thin stones like Dekton, it’s easier than ever to clad cabinetry with material resembling stone, resulting in an ultra-clean, minimalist aesthetic that works wonderfully in contemporary projects,” Dandamudi said.
“Similarly, the more a designer knows about fabrication tools, the more creative their applications get. A designer who knows the compression strength and weight of granite might push boundaries to create things that look impossible, such as floating vanities or cantilevered islands. Or they might realize they can match veining across cabinets in a way that resembles abstract art. There’s nothing like seeing a designer’s face light up when they realize what’s possible,” Dandamudi added.
It is part of the reason, she noted, that she attends stone shows every year and why the team continues to educate themselves on what is available, and the technicalities involved so that they can be innovative and flex their creative muscles in what they can bring to the metaphorical table for clients and design partners. Dandamudi noted the company is also looking at purchasing a full scanner to be able to render projects in real time for their clients based on the physical, material slabs they source.
“It’s that there are other ways of doing things. When we did The Ritz-Carlton, they had a lobby they wanted to redo and they wanted 36-inch-by-36-inch modules, but because it was an existing building, it didn’t have the structural depth for it, so how do we deliver this beautiful outcome? We took real marble and put it on porcelain, so they are thinner. It made it lighter, and the grout lines are like tile grout lines, which is what the designer wanted at a budget that made sense,” Dandamudi said.
“That is what we bring to the table. We bring experience and work really hard not to overstep certain boundaries. We are not there to impose a point of view. I believe very strongly from a design point of view that a home should also enhance the personality of the client, so it is not about whether I like red or blue, but it is about how that is working for the space,” Dandamudi added.
GI Stone recently acquired a 24,00-square-foot, two-story building and parking lot located adjacent its existing modern manufacturing facility to support the company’s continued growth. Dandamudi said while it’s a little early to talk about plans for the building, the company is in the process of redoing its existing facility and showroom. The renovation will feature printed Dekton on the exterior and showcase the team’s capabilities and the services it offers, immerse clients, partners, and visitors in the ethos of the company itself more so than serve as a traditional showroom. It is anticipated to be completed by the early part of next year, if not sooner.
“I mean, we don’t sell stone. We want to show people possibility. Our front showroom is not going to have all these stone samples, and in fact, my warehouse does not have stone samples. We have stone, but we don’t have samples on the wall, because that is not our focus. It is full of photography, of the work we have done,” Dandamudi said. “It is going to have the types of finishes, what you can do with it, the edging, the materials, the products—we are trying to put all of that into one room and integrate it in a way that people can absorb it. It is going to be interesting and innovative.”
For Dandamudi, who noted the cultural environment of the company itself is equally as important to her as the energy that can be felt from an ethically sourced piece of stone in a home, design is everything.
“I’m always very finicky about how documents look—lines and borders—and somebody said to me, ‘It’s just an Excel spreadsheet,’ and I’m like, ‘You’d be surprised, why do you think beauty and aesthetics are so important?’ It is because that is how your soul responds. It’s beyond poetry; it’s about structure, it’s about communication. When you walk into a space, you are communicating without even starting a conversation,” Dandamudi said. “That is why design is very important to me, because it is a form of communication, it’s a form of the tangible and the intangible.”
First published in Great Lakes By Design: In Flight, Volume 9, Issue 5
Text: R.J. Weick