There's a question I'm often asked at design and architecture fairs: «Are you a sculptor or an engineer?» I always take a second before answering - not out of hesitation, but because the question itself reveals something important about the state of the sector. It assumes that these two worlds are separate. That creativity belongs to the craftsman, and precision to the machine. That the robot is the enemy of the hand.

This tension - craft versus technology - is at the heart of every conversation about contemporary stone sculpture in Switzerland. And in 2025, it deserves to be dismantled.

The Swiss stone workshop: a three-generation story

The first generation is that of the journeyman stonemason. A master and his stone, a chisel and a hammer, decades of training. These workshops embody a tradition of handing down skills that goes back to the medieval cathedrals. Their value is indisputable. Their scale, limited.

The second generation appeared with the first digital milling machines in the 1990s and 2000s. Progressive workshops integrated CNC machines to speed up certain repetitive tasks. The technology came assist the craftsman, without replacing him. The sculptor remained the centre of gravity of the project.

Today, something different is happening. And that's what IKONERA stands for: a third generation, A world in which artificial intelligence and robotics are no longer assistants - they are the architects of the possible.

What the robot changes - and what it doesn't replace

Let's start by clearing up a persistent misunderstanding: a 7-axis CNC robot does not does not sculpt strictly speaking. It runs. The difference is fundamental.

The industrial precision robot we use at IKONERA can reproduce with an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre a shape that no one on earth could cut by hand within that timeframe. It can attack the material along seven simultaneous axes, creating impossible undercuts and algorithmic textures with a regularity that is beyond the reach of manual tools. He works at night. He never tires.

But what the robot doesn't do - and never will - is deciding what is beautiful. Choosing the tension between a rough surface and a polished edge. Understand the space in which the piece will live. To sense what the client has not said, but which can be seen in his sketches. This intelligence remains entirely human.

At IKONERA, each layer does what it does best. The AI models and explores. The robot executes with a rigour that the hand cannot achieve. The craftsman's hand finishes where the material requires something that algorithms don't yet know how to name.

Why generative AI is changing the very nature of projects

Here's what fundamentally distinguishes IKONERA from workshops that «also use a robot»: we don't use technology to speed up a pre-conceived idea. We use it to generate forms that would not have existed without it.

In concrete terms, a client - a five-star hotel, a property developer, a collector - arrives with a constraint. A space. A material. An atmosphere. A set of values. We translate this data into 3D models, parametric explorations, shapes that even the client didn't imagine they wanted until they saw them. AI doesn't decorate - it co-designs.

This is where the «craft vs technology» debate becomes a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other. It's a new category - what I call the'algorithmic workshop - in which artificial intelligence extends human creative capacities rather than constraining them.

The ecological question that nobody is asking

Compared with cast concrete - the ubiquitous substitute in prestige architecture - a sculpture in natural stone represents a reduction of the order of 70 % of CO₂ emissions throughout its life cycle. It does not degrade. It is not repainted. It ages and grows richer. A Jura limestone bench installed in 2025 will be there in 2225.

Switzerland, 2025: where do we really stand?

Switzerland is home to some of the most respected stone-cutting workshops in Europe. Training to become a stonemason is among the most rigorous in the world, with standards of excellence jealously guarded by professional structures that are firmly rooted in the fabric of French-speaking Switzerland.

But the reality of the market in 2025 is this: demand for complex, customised, fast-delivery pieces is exploding - driven by luxury hotels, ultra-premium developers, galleries and collectors. And traditional craftsmanship can't keep up with this scale. This is not a criticism. It's a structural reality.

IKONERA was not born in opposition to the world of craftsmanship. It was born of the conviction that the two worlds, working together, create something that neither could produce alone: pieces of a formal complexity that was previously impossible, made to competitive deadlines, with the tactile finesse that only the human hand can provide.

Defining the new category: the algorithmic workshop

This is where IKONERA fits in. Not between the artisan and the industrial - but somewhere else, on a third line that didn't exist five years ago and that will define the built aesthetics of the next decade.

The next time someone asks me if I'm a sculptor or an engineer, my answer will be simple: «Neither. I run an algorithmic workshop.»