“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Buildings
made of brick are found in very different epochs and cultures all over
the world. Always astonishing, the qualities of brickwork continue to be
explored
by the world’s best architects until today. A key characteristic of the
material’s success since time immemorial has always been the ease of
planning due to its standardized production and the resulting harmonized
building processes. In addition to longevity,
amazing constructive possibilities as well as inexpensive and at the
same time environmentally friendly production are among the qualities
that are particularly valued today. Using computer software solutions,
and even robots in some cases, today’s architects
are deploying brick in inventive ways: perforated, pixelated,
undulating and more.
The
featured works from the past and present are a demonstration of how the
use and popularity of bricks has not diminished one bit over the
millennia, and is
even gaining popularity today.
The
house has been realized in between front gardens and a public park. It
complements the two houses behind but also functions
perfectly on its own. The specific implantation of the volumes
preserves a maximum of openness between the public domain (park, street)
and the various private gardens. The typology of a single floor
pavilion was obtained by realizing part of the program underground.
The open living space at garden level is the heart of the
house
and has an outside view in four directions. The basement floor has a
completely different, more intimate organization
and gets light from a sheltered patio that is excavated along the front
side. The house is built with atypical building materials. The highly
reflective windows and the (prefabricated) concrete elements give the
project a brutalist look towards the public
domain. On the north and garden side, the two closed brick cores give a
rather soft and tactile impression. One of the most striking features
of this project is perhaps the ad random use of different brick
surpluses. They offer the house a unique striped look
and texture.