Matter and surface
Brick
housing school temple public space
It is a hand-sized piece of molded clay, sun-dried or kiln-fired, joined with mortar to form walls, floors and vaults.
What it solves
It gives durable, fire-resistant walls with a small unit one person can lay alone. In seismic zones it needs tie columns and beams.
Today
Use locally produced brick and take advantage of its exposed face without plaster. Keep it away from damp ground and protect the top of the wall from rain.
Common mistake
Building brick walls without tie columns or beams in a seismic zone.
Tomorrow
Brick laid with lime mortar can be cleaned and reused. Unfired earth block saves the kiln’s energy and can be made with hand presses in the neighborhood itself.
Fact In the cities of the Indus, bricks followed a ratio of 1, 2 and 4 between thickness, width and length.
Where it comes from
- 1Neolithic Near East Tell Aswad and Jericho, around 7500 to 7200 BC
The oldest known molded mud bricks. - 2Neolithic China Chengtoushan, China, around 4400 BC
The oldest known fired bricks. - 3Indus civilization Mohenjo-daro, present-day Pakistan, mid-third millennium BC
Entire cities of fired brick with uniform dimensions. - 4Josephine adobe house San José, Costa Rica, early 19th century
The petatillo, a square floor brick, was used in the houses of well-off families.
Masters
- Eladio Dieste Church of Christ the Worker, Atlántida, Uruguay, 1960
He created reinforced ceramics and with it built undulating walls and very thin brick vaults. He took a humble material to forms and spans that seemed impossible. - Marina Tabassum Bait ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2012
She used load-bearing brick walls with light courts open to the sky that ventilate and fill the prayer hall with light. It shows how much local brick can give on a very small budget.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Matter and surface
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.