When it comes to construction materials, it doesn’t get any simpler than brick. Little (mostly), modular and usually economical, brick’s been around for thousands of years and has turned into a building material of choice from ancient Sumeria to modern America.
Readily available in a range of sizes, shapes, colours and textures, brick can offer high fashion or a frequent touch. It can dress walls, floors and ceilings. It could be left just because it came from the kiln or completed onsite with paint or another therapy. It can be laid with wide or thin jointing, organized in many different patterns and used to make three-dimensional effects.
And though brick is wonderfully adaptable and versatile, the feature I like about it’s that a brick could be kept in your hand. A brick is just an nautical, modular construction component that gets stacked one on top of the other to create a wall, a living room, a home, a city. When I visit a brick wall, I really get a sense of the craftsman’s hand.
The next time you look at a brick wall, then think about how each brick has been placed, one at a time, together with skill and care.
Roundabout Studio Inc..
Celebrate the brick’s irregularity. Even simple, common brick takes on an elegance and richness when left exposed. Cleaned up and restored, this brick is laid in a running bond pattern having a soldier course of stacked bricks on top. Color, texture, patina and art combine to make a perfect complement for a modern stairway.
Jane Kim Design
Use brick to complement modernity. This hand-laid brick wall reveals evidence of a mason at work, stacking one brick atop the other. The worn character of the brick acts as a foil to the less unique, factory-made steel and glass objects. The design is even more intriguing with this yin and yang approach.
Christopher A Rose AIA, ASID
Use brick authentically. Celebrate the permanence and weight of brick by utilizing it all around. Although it costs more, turning the corner brick brings a sense of quality and caring that brick veneered just to the front can’t achieve. Contemplate arches, corner quoins and other details that celebrate the rich and long history of brick construction.
Bud Dietrich, AIA
Use brick decoratively. Brick comes in almost any colour and size imaginable. So vary the colour, size, positioning and location when placing a brick wall. Also consider changes to the mortar joints. By altering colors at several courses and by deeply raking the horizontal joints while filling the vertical joints flush, Frank Lloyd Wright attained amazing visual effects.
Hugh Jefferson Randolph Architects
Add a tiny detail. It doesn’t take much to go from boring, dull and intense to interesting and relaxed. It could be as simple as the inclusion of a horizontal shadow line every couple of courses.
You also could add depth using a blueprint of diamonds across a single part of the facade, using brick to make shadow and feel in a simple and inexpensive way.
Frederick + Frederick Architects
Practice brick’s lead. When they span an opening, bricks naturally produce a curve that at once expresses the way the wall is resisting gravity and, by altering orientation, tells us that we’re approaching something special, like an entry.
Let the bricks curve. Brick walls don’t have to have 90-degree corners. From its very nature, brick is an ideal substance for walls. Just look at Thomas Jefferson’s serpentine wall at the University of Virginia to see how plastic a brick wall could be.
Marcus Gleysteen Architects
Let brick be modern. We might have been building with brick for thousands of years, but it’s still one of the most modern materials. For an updated aesthetic, bricks might be stacked to form a display wall separated by means of an opening, as opposed to arranged to span an opening.
Max Crosby Construction
Use brick to warm and cool a home. Using its mass, brick is a pure heat sink. Throughout the daytime, brick will absorb the sun’s radiation and keep it as warmth. During the night, when temperatures are cooler, brick will provide off this warmth, keeping the interior cooler in summer and warmer in winter months. This natural capability, together with deep verandas, kept many old Southern homes quite comfortable during the year.
Catalyst Architects, LLC
Create a brick base. Due to its inherent mass and feel of permanence as well as its capacity to withstand considerably that wood cannot, brick creates an ideal base. Use brick to elevate up the house when parting from the land below is required.
Burns and Beyerl Architects
Dress up brick with stone accents. Complementing brick with cut-stone information, such as string courses, lintels and window surrounds, accomplishes another level of refinement. More playful and ornamental, the cut-stone details offer relief from an all-brick facade.
Remodeling Guides: Excellent building materials